Efficient Resource Allocation of Slicing Services in Softwarized Space-Aerial-Ground Integrated Networks for Seamless and Open Access Services

In current 6G study, space-aerial-ground integrated networks (SAGIN) are attracting the eye-catching attention. Traditional ground networks and facilities (e.g., open random access networks, Open-RAN) simply provide two-dimensional (2D) and limited-coverage services at low altitudes. SAGIN are designed to overcome these limitations and promise to provide 3D and seamless services and connectivity opportunities. Meanwhile, network softwarization (NetSoft) is highlighted as dominant 6G attribute. Through incorporating NetSoft, dedicated network appliance will be isolated as software blocks and general-purpose hardware. Initiated and customized services will be realized by chained software blocks and share the same underlying hardware. Thus, the resource usage and service diversity can be simultaneously achieved by adopting NetSoft. In current literature, SAGIN and NetSoft are well investigated. However, their joint research is at early stage. Therefore, we investigate the resource allocation in softwarized SAGIN for achieving open and seamless access services. We propose the efficient resource allocation and orchestration framework, abbreviated as
Slice-Soft-SAGIN
. Our framework approach is designed to achieve efficient resource allocation solution per slice service. Each time receiving one tailored slicing service, the first checking available resources will be conducted by our
Slice-Soft-SAGIN
. When passing the preliminary resource checking, the formal resource allocation of slicing service will be executed in order: first terrestrial node, second aerial node, third satellite node. In addition, our
Slice-Soft-SAGIN
executes wireless (spectrum) and wired (computing and storage) types of resources when serving this slicing service. This is one crucial highlight of our
Slice-Soft-SAGIN
framework. With the purpose of confirming merits of
Slice-Soft-SAGIN
, the comprehensive evaluation work is executed. Typical works and three extra counterparts constitute the whole evaluation. We analyze the evaluation results carefully.