Abstract
1- Introduction
2- ۵G service quality and business requirements
3- ۵G network softwarization and slicing: Concepts & use cases
4- ۵G network slicing enabling technologies
5- State-of-the-Art: 5G network slicing architectures and implementations
6- Open source orchestrators, proof of concepts & standardization efforts
7- ۵G network slicing orchestration and management
8- Future challenges and research directions
9- Conclusion
Declaration of Competing Interest
Acknowledgment
Appendix A. Supplementary materials
Research Data
References
Abstract
The increasing consumption of multimedia services and the demand of high-quality services from customers has triggered a fundamental change in how we administer networks in terms of abstraction, separation, and mapping of forwarding, control and management aspects of services. The industry and the academia are embracing 5G as the future network capable to support next generation vertical applications with different service requirements. To realize this vision in 5G network, the physical network has to be sliced into multiple isolated logical networks of varying sizes and structures which are dedicated to different types of services based on their requirements with different characteristics and requirements (e.g., a slice for massive IoT devices, smartphones or autonomous cars, etc.). Softwarization using Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)in 5G networks are expected to fill the void of programmable control and management of network resources.
In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review and updated solutions related to 5G network slicing using SDN and NFV. Firstly, we present 5G service quality and business requirements followed by a description of 5G network softwarization and slicing paradigms including essential concepts, history and different use cases. Secondly, we provide a tutorial of 5G network slicing technology enablers including SDN, NFV, MEC, cloud/Fog computing, network hypervisors, virtual machines & containers. Thidly, we comprehensively survey different industrial initiatives and projects that are pushing forward the adoption of SDN and NFV in accelerating 5G network slicing. A comparison of various 5G architectural approaches in terms of practical implementations, technology adoptions and deployment strategies is presented. Moreover, we provide a discussion on various open source orchestrators and proof of concepts representing industrial contribution. The work also investigates the standardization efforts in 5G networks regarding network slicing and softwarization. Additionally, the article presents the management and orchestration of network slices in a single domain followed by a comprehensive survey of management and orchestration approaches in 5G network slicing across multiple domains while supporting multiple tenants. Furthermore, we highlight the future challenges and research directions regarding network softwarization and slicing using SDN and NFV in 5G networks.
Introduction
The exponential growth of mobile video services (e.g., YouTube and Mobile TV) on smart devices and the advances in the Internet of Things (IoT) have triggered global initiatives towards developing the fifth-generation (5G) mobile and wireless communication sys-tems [1,2,3]. The increasing number of smart devices (e.g., tablets and smartphones) and the growing number of bandwidth-hungry mobile applications (e.g., live video streaming, online video gaming) which demand higher spectral efficiency than that of 4G systems are posing significant challenges in 5G. The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast [4] predicts that IP video traffic will be 82% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2022, up from 75% in 2017. Mobile video traffic alone will account for 78% of the global mobile data traffic. While the traffic for virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) will increase at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 82% between 2017 and 2022, the traffic growth rates of TVs, tablets, smartphones, and M2M modules will be 21%, 29%, 49%, and 49%, respectively. Such a tremendous growth will be the result of 12.3 billion mobile-connected devices, which is expected to even exceed the world’s projected population of 8 billion by 2022. A 5G connection is expected to generate 4.7 times more data than that of 4G [4].