Efficient and Secure 5G Core Network Slice Provisioning Based on VIKOR Approach

Network slicing in 5G is expected to essentially change the way in which network operators deploy and manage vertical services with different performance requirements. Efficient and secure slice provisioning algorithms are important since network slices share the limited resources of the physical network. In this article, we first analyze the security issues in network slicing and formulate an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model for secure 5G core network slice provisioning. Then, we propose a heuristic 5G core network slice provisioning algorithm called VIKOR-CNSP based on VIKOR, which is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method. In the slice node provisioning stage, the node importance is ranked with the VIKOR approach by considering the node resource and topology attributes. The slice nodes are then provisioned according to the ranking results. In the slice link provisioning stage, the k shortest path algorithm is implemented to obtain the candidate physical paths for the slice link, and a strategy for selecting a candidate physical path is proposed to increase the slice acceptance ratio. The strategy first calculates the path factor P
_f
which is the product of the maximum link bandwidth utilization of the candidate physical path and its hop-count, and then chooses the candidate physical path with the smallest P
_f
to host the slice link. Extensive simulations show that the proposed algorithm can achieve the highest slice acceptance ratio and the largest provisioning revenue-to-cost ratio, satisfying the security constraints of 5G core network slice requests.