SCHEMA III: Dynamic & Scalable VNE Framework Based on Multi-Agent RL for 5G/6G Networks

Network Virtualization (NV) has proved a promising technology that allows multiple heterogeneous Virtual Networks (VNs) to operate simultaneously on the same infrastructure. Dynamic Virtual Network Embedding (NVE) has emerged as an enabler of elasticity and scalability in the VN deployment and resource allocation of the physical infrastructure. However, the key challenge in realizing NV in a sustainable way is how to dynamically embed VNs efficiently into physical network, which is defined as the VNE problem. To address this challenge, this paper proposes an approach that leverages Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) to solve the dynamic VNE of VNs for 5G/6G communication systems. The proposed framework consists of multiple horizontally distributed RL agents that co-operate to devise temporally dynamic VNE placements. The key contributions of this work are introducing a novel dynamic VNE orchestration framework for multi-domain networks based on Distributed RL, providing a scalable VNE framework targeted to Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (URLLC) services, evaluating and comparing the proposed algorithm with existing solutions in the state of the art. The paper concludes that there is a significant improvement in latency of 144.191% when compared to the baselines.