A Distributed Blockchain-based Broker for Efficient Resource Provisioning in 5G Networks

5G technology is expected to enable a plethora of new applications with distinct requirements. Provisioning resources to accommodate such applications implies having a flexible network infrastructure that can be tailored to the specific needs of each application. This can be achieved through network slicing. Still, several applications might request network slices, but their request may not be fulfilled due to lack of resources or lack of coverage and provisioning such resources is a cumbersome task. This paper describes an architecture that facilitates the dynamic leasing of resources among network operators to support cross-domain services. The cornerstone of this architecture is a brokering layer, called DBB, that relies on a blockchain-based bidding system to request resources and evaluate resource provisioning offers. The paper also presents a simulation-based use case scenario that illustrates the need for DBB and which was used to evaluate the performance of the proposed architecture.