Decentralization of 5G slice resource allocation

The 5G infrastructure brings a key novelty in networked systems design that is a new resource provisioning entity, the so-called "network slice". A network slice is meant to serve end-to-end services as a composition of different network and system resources as the radio, the link and a variety of computing resources (CPU, RAM, storage), generally each managed by a distinct decision-maker (platform, provider, orchestrator or controller). Naturally, centralized slice orchestration approaches have been proposed, where a multi-domain orchestrator allocates the resources, using a multi-resource allocation rule. Nonetheless, while simplifying the algorithmic approach, centralization can come at the expense of scalability and performance. In this paper, we propose new ways to decentralize the slice resource allocation problem, using cascade or parallel resource allocations. We provide an exhaustive analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches together with a numerical analysis in a realistic environment.