The Path Towards Virtualized Wireless Communications: A Survey and Research Challenges

To keep up with the increasing number of connected devices in people’s daily lives, it is necessary to develop intelligent mechanisms that perform the entire network management, interconnecting Wi-Fi, and the emerging beyond Fifth-Generation (5G) communications. Hence, it is essential to consider multiple usage scenarios, while managing end devices’ limitations. As a result, developing a system that allows network operators to link Wi-Fi services on their main networks becomes a critical issue. These include a new paradigm that tackles optimal and dynamic resource allocation techniques. Thus, to consider in a combined way, the applications requirements, the resources available, and the different tiers involved, mechanisms such as virtualization and slicing have emerged to handle the heterogeneous context of the next-generation wireless communications. Moreover, the allocation of Radio Access Network (RAN) resources needs to be addressed. For this purpose, Open-RAN has in mind an open environment, which relies on virtualized functions and is mostly vendor agnostic. This technology will enable high data rates while maintaining adequate Quality of Service (QoS) in wireless communications. This paper advances current literature, which mainly discusses these themes individually, by providing a comprehensive survey in Next Generation Wireless Communications, highlighting their integration with beyond 5G Communications. First, we introduce the Wi-Fi evolution and explain the main standards developed over the years. Second, we present the most recent Wi-Fi standards, Wi-Fi 6 and 7, compared with 5G and beyond. Lastly, we explain the concepts related to slicing, virtualization, RAN, Open-RAN and the open research challenges.