Robust Resource Sharing in Network Slicing via Hypothesis Testing

Abstract

In network slicing, the network operator needs to satisfy the service level agreements of multiple slices at the same time and on the same physical infrastructure. To do so with reduced provisioned resources, the operator may consider resource sharing mechanisms. However, each slice then becomes susceptible to traffic surges in other slices which degrades performance isolation. To maintain both high efficiency and high isolation, we propose the introduction of hypothesis testing in resource sharing. Our approach comprises two phases. In the trial phase, the operator obtains a stochastic model for each slice that describes its normal behavior, provisions resources and then signs the service level agreements. In the regular phase, whenever there is resource contention, hypothesis testing is conducted to check which slices follow their normal behavior. Slices that fail the test are excluded from resource sharing to protect the well-behaved ones. We test our approach on a mobile traffic dataset. Results show that our approach fortifies the service level agreements against unexpected traffic patterns and achieves high efficiency via resource sharing. Overall, our approach provides an appealing tradeoff between efficiency and isolation.