FSA: fronthaul slicing architecture for 5G using dataplane programmable switches
Authors: Nishant Budhdev, Raj Joshi, Pravein Govindan Kannan, Mun Choon Chan, Tulika Mitra
Abstract
5G networks are gaining pace in development and deployment in recent years. One of 5G's key objective is to support a variety of use cases with different Service Level Objectives (SLOs). Slicing is a key part of 5G that allows operators to provide a tailored set of resources to different use cases in order to meet their SLOs. Existing works focus on slicing in the frontend or the C-RAN. However, slicing is missing in the fronthaul network that connects the frontend to the C-RAN. This leads to over-provisioning in the fronthaul and the C-RAN, and also limits the scalability of the network.