Elastic RAN slicing technology with multi-timescale SLA assurances for heterogeneous services provision in 6G

Abstract

Digital transformation brings diverse applications along with varying Quality of Service (QoS) and isolation requirements. Network slicing, a key 5G technology anticipated to persist in 6G, aims to meet these heterogeneous requirements. However, due to conflicting usage of scarce resources among services, especially with multi-timescale Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements including QoS and isolation, implementing slicing in the Radio Access Network (RAN) domain is a significant challenge. Therefore, this paper formulates the radio resource allocation problem posed by the coexistence of multiple URLLC (Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications) with varying delay requirements and eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband) as a multi-timescale optimization problem. Consequently, a novel MPC (Model Predictive Control)-based RAN slicing resource allocation model called MPC-RSS is proposed. Specifically, MPC-RSS ensures elastic QoS through delay-tracking mechanism and far-sighted schemes. Meanwhile, it maintains elastic isolation by introducing logical and physical isolation constraint terms. Compared with the existing state-of-the-art approaches, simulation results show that MPC-RSS can achieve better and more elastic SLA performance. Our proposal provides a choice for 6G RAN to empower vertical industries achieving digital upgrades.