Toward Operator-to-Waveform 5G Radio Access Network Slicing

RAN slicing refers to a vision where multiple MNOs are assigned virtual networks (i.e., slices) instantiated on top of the same physical network resources. Existing work in this area has addressed RAN slicing at different levels of network abstraction, but has often neglected the multitude of tightly intertwined inter-level operations involved in practical slicing systems. For this reason, this article discusses a novel framework for operator-to-waveform 5G RAN slicing. In the proposed framework, slicing operations are treated holistically, including MNOs' selection of base stations and maximum number of users, down to the waveform-level scheduling of resource blocks. Simulation results show that the proposed framework generates RAN slices where 95 percent of allocated resources can be used to perform coordination- based 5G transmission technologies, and facilitates the coexistence of multiple RAN slices providing up to 120 percent improvement in terms of SINR experienced by mobile users.