Slice Merging/Spliting Operations and Tenant Profit Optimization Across 5G Base Stations

Network slicing is a promising technology that can tailor the network to support diverse types of services over a common physical network infrastructure, and tenants can lease the customized slices from network providers to provide customized services for their users. This paper focuses on tenant profit optimization in 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) slicing and analyzes slice resource reservation and reconfiguration operation. A slice cost model is proposed, in which a base cost is included to compensate reconfiguration management overhead for the network providers. Increasing the accuracy of tenant resource requirement prediction can decrease tenant cost while guaranteeing QoS of its users. Further, we analyze the price strategy based on user traffic, and propose several alternative price scheme. In slicing across multiple Base Stations (BSs) scenario, we study two slice management operations, called slice mergence/split, similar but not identical to the breathing behavior of conventional cellular BS management. The tenant profit optimization problem across adjacent BSs is formulated, which can be used in slice mergence/splilt decision making. Taking VR (Virtual Reality) application as an example, simulation in allusion to the typical user arrival process is performed. The simulation indicates how these two operations can increase tenant profits.