Hardware-Based Network Slicing for Supporting Smart Grids Self-Healing over 5G Networks

As a fundamental technology in the Fifth-Generation (5G) mobile networks, network slicing creates multiple logical networks for various vertical businesses over the same physical 5G infrastructure to achieve cost-effective service provisioning. Meanwhile, mission-critical vertical businesses would require a very high level of guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) that is beyond software-based network slicing approaches. In this paper, we address a highly demanding Smart Grid Self-Healing Automatic Reconfiguration use case to ensure ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency communications (uRLLC) through improved network slicing based on programmable hardware acceleration. Empirical results have demonstrated the superior performance of the proposed approach in meeting the strict and challenging QoS requirements of this use case.