Strategies for Network Slicing Negotiation in a Dynamic Resource Market

Abstract

One of the disruptive innovations introduced by 5G networks is the opportunity for a new group of stakeholders to be actively involved in the management of network slices with the role of tenants. This allows to go beyond the user-centric QoS paradigm of 4G, and to include tools for handling the aggregate performance of multiple services and user groups and to focus on slice resource management, also at the new 5G NR interface. So far, research efforts have privileged a first solution based on the concept of isolation between slices. However, proposed solutions are not particularly efficient due to the loss of pooling gains, and not very reliable due to variable channel conditions that with slice limited resources make performance not easily predictable. We propose a slice management framework where the shared resources are negotiated by tenants in a real-time market based on slice instantaneous demands. Our model, based on game theory, allows tenants to optimize their service strategies acquiring resources when and where it is necessary, according to the level of quality and reliability requested by the specific traffic types they handle. In this paper, we focus on modeling the game theoretical framework and on characterizing its equilibria in a multi-tenant scenario.