Network Slicing-aware NFV Orchestration for 5G Service Platforms

The advent of 5G promises to unleash highly pervasive network coverage and density, increased data rate and capacity, optimized instantiation of virtualized resources in a multi-tenant and multi-service network capable of fulfilling the stringent requirements of various heterogeneous applications. Network slicing is a key enabler of 5G to allow multiple customized and isolated virtual networks upon a single shared physical network infrastructure. In this work, we present a survey of how various network virtualization solutions address slicing, we review the management and orchestration tools available to implement it, and we describe the slicing-aware orchestration platform that we designed for our project (5GCity). Our solution embraces creation of slices of various network elements such as compute nodes, physical networks, radio parts and network edge resources by coordinating different underlying controllers. The platform is being evaluated in three live city pilots (Barcelona, Lucca, and Bristol), already achieving slice creation in a few seconds and control plane latency of a few milliseconds.