Empirical design, prototyping and evaluation of a new hardware-based network slicing approach for 6G backbone networks

With 5G being currently deployed worldwide, research into 6G has been initiated to advance the key technologies of 5G to the next level. Network slicing, as a cornerstone technology in 5G, is expected to continue playing an important role in guaranteeing the Quality of Service for various vertical business use cases with divergent yet more demanding requirements in the next generation. This research explores a towards 6G scenario where ultra-high performance of backbone network slicing is entailed as part of an end-to-end solution to address ultra-reliable low-latency communications in mission-critical industrial operations for smart factory and manufacturing, smart warehouse and other Industry 4.0 and beyond applications. To address the highly demanding requirements, this paper proposes a new hardware-based network slicing approach based on the eXpress Data Path (XDP). The proposed solution is designed, prototyped and compared with an existing hardware-based alternative through empirical experiments over a pre-6G infrastructure testbed. The insights gained from the experimentation would help cast light on hardware-accelerated approaches in 6G network slicing.