Tiago Ferreto | Searcharxiv

arXiv2025

Energy Efficiency in Network Slicing: Survey and Taxonomy

Network Slicing (NS) is a fundamental feature of 5G, 6G, and future mobile networks, enabling logically isolated virtual networks over shared infrastructure. As data demand increases and services diversify, ensuring Energy Efficiency (EE) in NS is vital (not only for operational cost savings but also to reduce the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector's environmental footprint). This survey addresses the need for a comprehensive and holistic perspective on energy-efficient NS by reviewing and classifying recent strategies across the NS life cycle. Our contributions are threefold: (i) a thorough review of state-of-the-art techniques aimed at reducing energy consumption in NS; (ii) a novel taxonomy that organizes strategies into infrastructure, path/route, and slice operation levels; and (iii) the identification of open challenges and research directions, with a focus on systemic, cross-layer, and AI-driven approaches. By consolidating insights from recent developments, our work bridges existing gaps in the literature, offering a structured foundation for researchers and practitioners to design, evaluate, and improve energy-efficient network slicing systems.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2023

Enhancing Network Slicing Architectures with Machine Learning, Security, Sustainability and Experimental Networks Integration

Network Slicing (NS) is an essential technique extensively used in 5G networks computing strategies, mobile edge computing, mobile cloud computing, and verticals like the Internet of Vehicles and industrial IoT, among others. NS is foreseen as one of the leading enablers for 6G futuristic and highly demanding applications since it allows the optimization and customization of scarce and disputed resources among dynamic, demanding clients with highly distinct application requirements. Various standardization organizations, like 3GPP's proposal for new generation networks and state-of-the-art 5G/6G research projects, are proposing new NS architectures. However, new NS architectures have to deal with an extensive range of requirements that inherently result in having NS architecture proposals typically fulfilling the needs of specific sets of domains with commonalities. The Slicing Future Internet Infrastructures (SFI2) architecture proposal explores the gap resulting from the diversity of NS architectures target domains by proposing a new NS reference architecture with a defined focus on integrating experimental networks and enhancing the NS architecture with Machine Learning (ML) native optimizations, energy-efficient slicing, and slicing-tailored security functionalities. The SFI2 architectural main contribution includes the utilization of the slice-as-a-service paradigm for end-to-end orchestration of resources across multi-domains and multi-technology experimental networks. In addition, the SFI2 reference architecture instantiations will enhance the multi-domain and multi-technology integrated experimental network deployment with native ML optimization, energy-efficient aware slicing, and slicing-tailored security functionalities for the practical domain.

cs.NI↗