An Optimization-Based Orchestrator for Resource Access and Operation Management in Sliced 5G Core Networks

Network slicing is a promising technology that network operators can deploy the services by slices with heterogeneous quality of service (QoS) requirements. However, an orchestrator for network operation with efficient slice resource provisioning algorithms is essential. This work stands on Internet service provider (ISP) to design an orchestrator analyzing the critical influencing factors, namely access control, scheduling, and resource migration, to systematically evolve a sustainable network. The scalability and flexibility of resources are jointly considered. The resource management problem is formulated as a mixed-integer programming (MIP) problem. A solution approach based on Lagrangian relaxation (LR) is proposed for the orchestrator to make decisions to satisfy the high QoS applications. It can investigate the resources required for access control within a cost-efficient resource pool and consider allocating or migrating resources efficiently in each network slice. For high system utilization, the proposed mechanisms are modeled in a pay-as-you-go manner. Furthermore, the experiment results show that the proposed strategies perform the near-optimal system revenue to meet the QoS requirement by making decisions.