Design and Experimental Validation of a Software-Defined Radio Access Network Testbed with Slicing Support

TL;DR

This paper presents the design and experimental validation of a Software-Defined Radio Access Network testbed supporting network slicing, demonstrating slice provisioning and slice-aware radio resource management aligned with 3GPP standards.

Contribution

It introduces a novel SD-RAN testbed with slicing capabilities and implements slice-aware RRM functions following 3GPP Release 15 specifications.

Findings

Successful demonstration of RAN slice provisioning and management

Implementation of slice-aware admission control and scheduling

Validation of the testbed's functionality through experimental results

Abstract

Network slicing is a fundamental feature of 5G systems to partition a single network into a number of segregated logical networks, each optimized for a particular type of service, or dedicated to a particular customer or application. The realization of network slicing is particularly challenging in the Radio Access Network (RAN) part, where multiple slices can be multiplexed over the same radio channel and Radio Resource Management (RRM) functions shall be used to split the cell radio resources and achieve the expected behaviour per slice. In this context, this paper describes the key design and implementation aspects of a Software-Defined RAN (SD-RAN) experimental testbed with slicing support. The testbed has been designed consistently with the slicing capabilities and related management framework established by 3GPP in Release 15. The testbed is used to demonstrate the provisioning of RAN slices (e.g. preparation, commissioning and activation phases) and the operation of the implemented RRM functionality for slice-aware admission control and scheduling.