Energy and Cost Efficient Resource Allocation for Blockchain-Enabled NFV

TL;DR

This paper proposes a decentralized blockchain-based resource allocation method for NFV in 5G networks, aiming to reduce energy consumption and costs while overcoming NFVO limitations.

Contribution

It introduces a blockchain-enabled, NFVO-free resource allocation framework for NFV, addressing security and failure issues in centralized architectures.

Findings

Reduced energy consumption in NFV resource allocation.

Lowered resource utilization costs.

Decentralized approach enhances security and reliability.

Abstract

Network function virtualization (NFV) is a promising technology to make 5G networks flexible and agile. NFV decreases operators' OPEX and CAPEX by decoupling the physical hardware from the functions they perform. In NFV, users' service request can be viewed as a service function chain (SFC) consisting of several virtual network functions (VNFs) which are connected through virtual links. Resource allocation in NFV is done through a centralized authority called NFV Orchestrator (NFVO). This centralized authority suffers from some drawbacks such as single point of failure and security. Blockchain (BC) technology is able to address these problems by decentralizing resource allocation. The drawbacks of NFVO in NFV architecture and the exceptional BC characteristics to address these problems motivate us to focus on NFV resource allocation to users' SFCs without the need for an NFVO based on BC technology. To this end, we assume there are two types of users: users who send SFC requests (SFC requesting users) and users who perform mining process (miner users). For SFC requesting users, we formulate NFV resource allocation (NFV-RA) problem as a multi-objective problem to minimize the energy consumption and utilized resource cost, simultaneously.