On the Need of Joint Bandwidth and NFV Resource Orchestration: A Realistic 5G Access Network Use Case

5G envisages a “hyper-connected society,” where an enormous number of devices are inter-connected anywhere and at any time. Cloud-enabled radio access networks (RANs) where intelligence is placed in conjunction with the radio heads at the proximity of end users are a promising solution to fulfill the 5G expectations of sub-millisecond latency, huge traffic volumes, and higher data rates. Network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) developments enable end users to access advanced features, such as configurability, automation, scalability, improved resource utilization, and multi tenancy over the cloud-enabled RANs. Management and orchestration techniques are the ultimate factor that determines the effectiveness of the novel SDN/NFV features being introduced. Our focus in this letter is the resource allocation in a realistic cloud-enabled RAN, taking into account the dynamics of ~100,000 persons movement in a crowded event, i.e., a football match. The proposed solution jointly orchestrates NFV and bandwidth resources, as one resource affects the other. Simulation results clearly verify the benefits of the proposed solution over traditional disjoint schemes.