Complex network theory to model 5G Network Slicing
Dániel Ficzere · NOMS 2022-2022 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium · 2022
5G is envisioned to support various new use cases and network services, not only for traditional residential mobile network users but also for industry use cases. 5G network slicing is essential to providing flexible, scalable and on-demand solutions for this vast array of new use cases. This paper elaborates on the basic concepts of Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and 5G network slicing. It identifies the main challenges and research gaps regarding 5G network slicing and also offers initial thoughts on how these challenges can be addressed with complex network theory. As I am in the early stages of my doctoral research, I have not fully developed doctoral theses, but I propose two research areas in this paper. (i) how to improve the robustness of network slices. (ii) what network KPIs (bandwidth, latency, jitter, and so on) can be integrated into a model to meet the use case requirements, and how these KPIs can be mapped to the different elements of the model and network resources.