Slice-Aware Capacity Expansion Strategies in Multi-Tenant Networks

Abstract

5G introduces a broad range of new applications with diverse and demanding performance targets that require substantial investments on the radio access infrastructure. The network slicing model allows to share resources and to distribute responsibilities for network capacity expansion to infrastructure providers and for identifying resource needs to slice tenants specialized in different application domains. In this paper, we focus on the problem of taking capacity expansion decisions considering the traffic needs and performance requirements of network slices instantiated on the access infrastructure. We build on a techno-economic model that allows to describe the trade of resources between infrastructure provider and tenants. The model is based on a resource market that generates revenues for matching infrastructure recurrent costs, but also extra revenues for capacity expansion and technology upgrade. Being the pricing scheme based on resource scarcity in different geographical regions, we propose to guide capacity expansion decisions through an automatic algorithm based on utility functions and available budget generated by the market. Results show the effectiveness of the approach proposed.