Citation: Venkatapathy, S.;
Srinivasan, T.; Jo, H.-G.; Ra, I.-H.
Optimal Resource Allocation for 5G
Network Slice Requests Based on
Combined PROMETHEE-II and SLE
Strategy. Sensors 2023, 23, 1556.
https://doi.org/10.3390/s23031556
Academic Editor: Luis Velasco
Received: 9 December 2022
Revised: 16 January 2023
Accepted: 20 January 2023
Published: 31 January 2023
Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Article
Optimal Resource Allocation for 5G Network Slice Requests
Based on Combined PROMETHEE-II and SLE Strategy
Sujitha Venkatapathy
1
, Thiruvenkadam Srinivasan
2
, Han-Gue Jo
1,
* and In-Ho Ra
1,
*
1
School of Computer Information and Communication Engineering, Kunsan National University,
Gunsan 54150, Republic of Korea; sujithavpacet@gmail.com
2
School of Electrical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 632014, Tamilnadu, India;
thiruvenkadam.s@vit.ac.in
* Correspondence: hgjo@kunsan.ac.kr (H.-G.J.); ihra@kunsan.ac.kr (I.-H.R.)
Abstract:
The network slicing of physical infrastructure is required for fifth-generation mobile
networks to make significant changes in how service providers deliver and defend services in the face
of evolving end-user performance requirements. To perform this, a fast and secure slicing technique
is employed for node allocation and connection establishment, which necessitates the usage of a
large number of domain applications across the network. PROMETHEE-II and SLE algorithms
were used in this study’s approach to network design for node allocation and link construction,
respectively. The PROMETHEE-II approach takes into account a variety of node characteristics
while constructing a node importance rank array (NIRA), including the node capacity, bandwidth of
neighboring connections, degree of the node, and proximity centrality among others. The SLE method
is proposed to record all possible link configurations for the network slice request (NSR) nodes to
guarantee that the shortest path array (SPA) of the NSR has a high acceptance rate. Performance
metrics such as the service revenue and acceptance ratio were considered to evaluate the effectiveness
of the suggested approach. The effectiveness of network slicing has been further examined under
different infrastructure models to determine whether a small-world network structure is beneficial
to 5G network. For each scenario, simulations were carried out and the results were compared to
previously published findings from other sources.
Keywords:
5G network; virtual network embedding; resource allocation; heuristic fuzzy; shortest path
1. Introduction
In recent years, private and commercial 5G mobile networks have faced enormous
mobile traffic due to a growth in the use of portable devices by consumers. In the near
future, 5G technology is projected to assist many new enterprises and vertical sectors,
including transportation, healthcare, and the energy supply chain. A highly sophisticated
5G architecture [
1
] is required for providing high-level, continuous, and reliable service to
user equipment (UE) with a broad variety of needs. The next generation mobile networks
(NGMN) by Alliance established the network slicing idea to achieve resource allocation for
user devices with varying performance needs in 5G network settings [
2
]. Individual slices
of physical infrastructure are created based on the grouping of requirements through a set
of virtual network functions (VNFs) that have virtual resources, logical topology, traffic
regulation, and node and link provisioning rules, as well as security monitoring parameters
to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) [
3
]. The 5G system architecture that supports
network slicing was previously established in the first edition of 5G normative standards
and was authorized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) [
4
]. According to
the physical architecture, each logical network slice is generally made up of three key
components: the radio access network (RAN) and the core network (CN) [
5
]. The logical
networks are shown in Figure 1 with the components separated, assuming that the physical
Sensors 2023, 23, 1556. https://doi.org/10.3390/s23031556 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
