Towards Robust Slice Control in SDN Enabled WiFi based IoT Networks

With the emergence of advanced use cases in In-dustrial, Healthcare and Smart City loT networks, applications and devices exhibit a wide range of QoS requirements. In the realm of loT, WiFi is a widely adopted technology that employs Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) for QoS provisioning. However, EDCA's reliance on just four Access Categories (ACs) falls short in meeting the diverse range of QoS requirements of loT networks. SG-EmPOWER, a Software Defined Networking (SDN) framework, has introduced Network Slicing to WiFi networks, offering a robust solution to address the QoS diversity challenges in loT networks. SG-EmPOWER ensures slice priorities through quantum assignments to the slices, however this approach faces limitations in achieving effective slice differentiation, particularly in light of WiFi's Distributed Coordination Function (DCF). To overcome this limitation, we have introduced channel access parameter such as Contention Window (CW) into the slice configuration in addition to quantum value. This not only improves slice QoS differentiation but also brings robust and dynamic control over network QoS. Our proposed slice control mechanism has demonstrated substantial improvements, with an average increase of 47.66 % in per-slice throughput and an average reduction in jitter in high-priority slices of 23 %.