Supporting QoS requirements provisions on 5G network slices using an efficient priority-based polling technique

Mobile operators aim to enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) in each new mobile network generation. The upcoming 5G mobile network is expected to make a revolutionary enhancement in the provided service level. Serving diverse requirements from different mobile network users in a flexible and a dynamic way is a key demand. Thus, the 5G network-slicing concept provides an optimal and an efficient way to deal with the diversity of end users requirements and demands. In 5G, three different network slices share the network resources in a virtually isolated slicing manner. These slices will be in different priority classes. Indeed, priority scheduling algorithms are needed to guarantee the service level for each slice among all other lesser priority slices. This paper proposes a priority-based polling scheme with multiple scheduling techniques for the data traffic coming from multiple 5G network slices. Cyclic and random polling with/without priority are analyzed and discussed for multiple 5G use cases. The analytical model of the proposed priority-based polling scheme is presented and the performance measures in terms of the average waiting time and utilization are derived. The results prove that the proposed polling scheme shows a powerful ability to control the 5G virtual base-band units pool and guard the QoS of the 5G slices, which is what 5G networks need.