Radio access network resource slicing for flexible service execution

Network slicing is a key enabler for the service-oriented 5G vision, that aims to satisfy various per-service requirements. Unlike core network slicing, radio access network (RAN) slicing is still at its infancy, with several works just starting to investigate the challenges and potentials to enable a mutli-tenant, multi-service RAN. One of the major challenges in RAN slicing is to provide different levels of resource isolation, through resource abstraction, virtualization, and splitting among different tenants/services, while at the same time providing multiplexing gains. To this end, in this work we propose a detailed approach for radio resource virtualization, leveraging different resource abstraction types. Based on it, we formulate the problem of inter-slice resource partitioning and allocation, and propose an algorithm to efficiently tackle this problem. Finally, we provide simulation results that support the benefits of resource abstraction and our proposed algorithm.