Intent-Aware Radio Resource Scheduling in a RAN Slicing Scenario Using Reinforcement Learning
Cleverson Nahum, Victor Hugo L. Lopes, Ryan M. Dreifuerst, Pedro Batista, Ilan Correa, Kléber V. Cardoso, Aldebaro Barreto da Rocha Klautau Junior, Robert W. Heath · IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications · 2023
Network slicing at the radio access network (RAN) domain, called RAN slicing, requires elasticity, efficient resource sharing, and customization. In this scenario, radio resource scheduling (RRS) is responsible for dealing with scarce and limited frequency spectrum resources available at the RAN domain while fulfilling the slice intents. The wide variety of scenarios supported in 5G and beyond 5G networks makes the RRS problem in RAN slicing scenario a significant challenge. This paper proposes an intent-aware reinforcement learning method to perform the RRS function in a RAN slicing scenario. The slice’s quality of service intents is described in a common intent model in a service-level agreement. The proposed method tries to prevent intent faults by making the management of radio resources available among slices. This method uses slices’ and user equipment network metrics in the observation space. The proposed method is evaluated under different network conditions and outperforms different baselines considering the slices’ intents fulfillment.