Towards 5G network slicing for vehicular ad-hoc networks: An end-to-end approach

The upcoming 5G networks not only have to support increasing data rates but also must provide a common infrastructure on which new services with vastly different network QoS requirements with lower delay are delivered. More precisely, applications for VANETs, that are mainly oriented to safety issues and entertainment (e.g. video streaming and video-on-demand, web browsing) are increasing. Most of these applications have strict latency constraints of the order of few milliseconds, and very high reliability requirements. To address such needs, a 5G platform needs the ability to dynamically create programmable virtual networks and differentiated traffic treatment utilizing solutions such as network slicing. To this end, in this paper, we propose a programmable and dynamic end-to-end slicing mechanism in an M-CORD based LTE network. One of the key features of M-CORD that the proposed network slicing mechanism utilizes is the virtualized EPC that enables customization and modification. M-CORD provides necessary functionality to program slice definitions, where the proposed mechanism fully follows its software-defined approach. Furthermore, we demonstrate how end devices placed in different slices can be allocated with different QoS treatments from the network operator based on end-user type. The results show that the proposed network slicing mechanism selects appropriate slices and allocates resources to users specific to their needs and service type.