An elastic resource allocation algorithm enabling wireless network virtualization

Abstract

Following the wired network virtualization, virtualization of wireless networks becomes the next step aiming to provide network or infrastructure providers with the ability to manage and control their networks in a more dynamic fashion. The benefit of the wireless mobile network virtualization is a more agile business model where virtual mobile network operators (MNOs) can request and thus pay physical MNOs in a more pay-as-you-use manner. This paper presents some resource allocation algorithms for joint network virtualization and resource allocation of wireless networks. The overall algorithm involves the following two major processes: firstly, to virtualize a physical wireless network into multiple slices, each representing a virtual network, and secondly, to carry out physical resource allocation within each virtual network (or slice). In particular, the paper adopts orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) as its physical layer to achieve more efficient resource utilization. Therefore, the resource allocation is conducted in terms of sub-carriers. Although the motivation and algorithm design are based on IEEE 802.16 or WiMAX networks, the principle and algorithmic essence are also applicable to other OFDM access-based wireless networks. The aim was to achieve the following design goals: virtual network isolation and resource efficiency. The latter is measured in terms of network throughput and packet delivery ratio. The simulation results show that the aforementioned goals have been achieved.

Resource Virtualization for Customized Delay- Bounded QoS Provisioning in Uplink VMIMO-SC-FDMA Systems

“…Then, they develop a theory of virtualization to discuss virtualization in a coherent and structured manner. In existing architectures, wireless network infrastructures, especially in radio access network (RAN) [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12], are sliced to create wireless virtual resources, which can offer customized services to VMNs by different schedulers in a secure and isolated manner. M. Yang et al only propose OpenRAN, an architecture for software-defined RAN via virtualization [5].…”

“…The algorithms proposed in [9], [10] are for flat fading channels, but cannot be directly applied to the actual broadband wireless communication system, where channels are with frequencyselective fading channels. Thus, to address this issue, we have done some research works on resource virtualization in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) systems under a frequency-selective wireless channel [11], [12], where the virtual resource slices are implemented on subcarrier at the physical layer. However, the delay-bounded QoS provisioning and the virtualization of multi-dimensional resources, such as spatial and time-frequency resources, are not considered.…”

Defining and Surveying Wireless Link Virtualization and Wireless Network Virtualization

“…1) Frequency-based isolation: As an example of the recursive test, we look at the works [66]- [74], [79], [80]. In these works, input spectrum resources are allocated as subchannels (in units of Hz) to users based on the rate (in bit/s) that can be achieved by users.…”

A bargaining game theoretic method for virtual resource allocation in LTE-based cellular networks

“…In [5,6], a combined VR scheduler, called network virtualization substrate (NVS), is proposed for WiMAX based WNV. Different from [5,6] in which the VR allocation is executed on a per OFDM frame basis, the authors in [7,8] propose two VR allocation schemes both on a per subcarrier basis. In [7], the proposed VR allocation scheme is to separate the subcarriers from the local users of the MNO to the users of the foreign WSPs.…”

“…Different from [5,6] in which the VR allocation is executed on a per OFDM frame basis, the authors in [7,8] propose two VR allocation schemes both on a per subcarrier basis. In [7], the proposed VR allocation scheme is to separate the subcarriers from the local users of the MNO to the users of the foreign WSPs. The objective is to meet the minimum rate requirements of all users while consuming as few subcarriers as possible.…”