1,586 research outputs found
GAN-powered Deep Distributional Reinforcement Learning for Resource Management in Network Slicing
Network slicing is a key technology in 5G communications system. Its purpose
is to dynamically and efficiently allocate resources for diversified services
with distinct requirements over a common underlying physical infrastructure.
Therein, demand-aware resource allocation is of significant importance to
network slicing. In this paper, we consider a scenario that contains several
slices in a radio access network with base stations that share the same
physical resources (e.g., bandwidth or slots). We leverage deep reinforcement
learning (DRL) to solve this problem by considering the varying service demands
as the environment state and the allocated resources as the environment action.
In order to reduce the effects of the annoying randomness and noise embedded in
the received service level agreement (SLA) satisfaction ratio (SSR) and
spectrum efficiency (SE), we primarily propose generative adversarial
network-powered deep distributional Q network (GAN-DDQN) to learn the
action-value distribution driven by minimizing the discrepancy between the
estimated action-value distribution and the target action-value distribution.
We put forward a reward-clipping mechanism to stabilize GAN-DDQN training
against the effects of widely-spanning utility values. Moreover, we further
develop Dueling GAN-DDQN, which uses a specially designed dueling generator, to
learn the action-value distribution by estimating the state-value distribution
and the action advantage function. Finally, we verify the performance of the
proposed GAN-DDQN and Dueling GAN-DDQN algorithms through extensive
simulations
Expanded Combinatorial Designs as Tool to Model Network Slicing in 5G
The network slice management function (NSMF) in 5G has a task to configure
the network slice instances and to combine network slice subnet instances from
the new-generation radio access network and the core network into an end-to-end
network slice instance. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model for
network slicing based on combinatorial designs such as Latin squares and
rectangles and their conjugate forms. We extend those designs with attributes
that offer different levels of abstraction. For one set of attributes we prove
a stability Lemma for the necessary conditions to reach a stationary ergodic
stage. We also introduce a definition of utilization ratio function and offer
an algorithm for its maximization. Moreover, we provide algorithms that
simulate the work of NSMF with randomized or optimized strategies, and we
report the results of our implementation, experiments and simulations for one
set of attributes.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Acces
Getting the Most Out of Your VNFs: Flexible Assignment of Service Priorities in 5G
Through their computational and forwarding capabilities, 5G networks can
support multiple vertical services. Such services may include several common
virtual (network) functions (VNFs), which could be shared to increase resource
efficiency. In this paper, we focus on the seldom studied VNF-sharing problem,
and decide (i) whether sharing a VNF instance is possible/beneficial or not,
(ii) how to scale virtual machines hosting the VNFs to share, and (iii) the
priorities of the different services sharing the same VNF. These decisions are
made with the aim to minimize the mobile operator's costs while meeting the
verticals' performance requirements. Importantly, we show that the
aforementioned priorities should not be determined a priori on a per-service
basis, rather they should change across VNFs since such additional flexibility
allows for more efficient solutions. We then present an effective methodology
called FlexShare, enabling near-optimal VNF-sharing decisions in polynomial
time. Our performance evaluation, using real-world VNF graphs, confirms the
effectiveness of our approach, which consistently outperforms baseline
solutions using per-service priorities
Massive MIMO for Internet of Things (IoT) Connectivity
Massive MIMO is considered to be one of the key technologies in the emerging
5G systems, but also a concept applicable to other wireless systems. Exploiting
the large number of degrees of freedom (DoFs) of massive MIMO essential for
achieving high spectral efficiency, high data rates and extreme spatial
multiplexing of densely distributed users. On the one hand, the benefits of
applying massive MIMO for broadband communication are well known and there has
been a large body of research on designing communication schemes to support
high rates. On the other hand, using massive MIMO for Internet-of-Things (IoT)
is still a developing topic, as IoT connectivity has requirements and
constraints that are significantly different from the broadband connections. In
this paper we investigate the applicability of massive MIMO to IoT
connectivity. Specifically, we treat the two generic types of IoT connections
envisioned in 5G: massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable
low-latency communication (URLLC). This paper fills this important gap by
identifying the opportunities and challenges in exploiting massive MIMO for IoT
connectivity. We provide insights into the trade-offs that emerge when massive
MIMO is applied to mMTC or URLLC and present a number of suitable communication
schemes. The discussion continues to the questions of network slicing of the
wireless resources and the use of massive MIMO to simultaneously support IoT
connections with very heterogeneous requirements. The main conclusion is that
massive MIMO can bring benefits to the scenarios with IoT connectivity, but it
requires tight integration of the physical-layer techniques with the protocol
design.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
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