Deep Reinforcement Learning for Network Slicing with Heterogeneous Resource Requirements and Time Varying Traffic Dynamics

Efficient network slicing is vital to deal with the highly variable and dynamic characteristics of traffic in 5G networks. Network slicing addresses a challenging dynamic network resource allocation problem where a single network infrastructure is divided into (virtual) multiple slices to meet the demands of different users with varying requirements, the main challenges being — the traffic arrival characteristics and the job resource requirements (e.g., compute, memory and bandwidth resources) for each slice can be highly dynamic. Traditional model-based optimization or queueing theoretic modeling becomes intractable with the high reliability, and stringent bandwidth and latency requirements imposed by 5G. We propose a deep reinforcement learning approach to address this dynamic coupled resource allocation problem. Model evaluation using synthetic and real workload data demonstrates that our deep reinforcement learning solution improves overall resource utilization, latency performance, and demands satisfied as compared to a baseline equal slicing strategy.