Slice as an Evolutionary Service: Genetic Optimization for Inter-Slice Resource Management in 5G Networks

In the context of fifth-generation mobile networks, the concept of “Slice as a Service”promotes mobile network operators to flexibly share infrastructures with mobile service providers and stakeholders. However, it also challenges with an emerging demand for efficient online algorithms to optimize the request-and-decision-based inter-slice resource management strategy. Based on genetic algorithms, this paper presents a novel online optimizer that efficiently approaches toward the ideal slicing strategy with maximized long-term network utility. The proposed method encodes slicing strategies into binary sequences to cope with the request-and-decision mechanism. It requires no a priori knowledge about the traffic/utility models and therefore supports heterogeneous slices while providing solid effectiveness, good robustness against non-stationary service scenarios, and high scalability.