About cookies on this site Our websites require some cookies to function properly (required). In addition, other cookies may be used with your consent to analyze site usage, improve the user experience and for advertising. For more information, please review your options. By visiting our website, you agree to our processing of information as described in IBM’sprivacy statement. To provide a smooth navigation, your cookie preferences will be shared across the IBM web domains listed here.
Publication
COMSNETS 2013
Conference paper
CellSlice: Cellular wireless resource slicing for active RAN sharing
Abstract
We present the design and implementation of Cell-Slice, a novel system for slicing wireless resources in a cellular network for effective Radio Access Network (RAN) sharing. CellSlice is a gateway-level solution that achieves the slicing without modifying the basestations' MAC schedulers, thereby significantly reducing the barrier for its adoption. Achieving slicing with a gateway-level solution is challenging, however, since resource scheduling decisions occur at the basestations at fine timescales, and these decisions are not visible at the gateways. In the uplink direction, CellSlice overcomes the challenge by indirectly constraining the uplink scheduler's decisions using a simple feedback-based adaptation algorithm. For downlink, we build on the technique used by NVS, a native basestation virtualization solution, and show that effective downlink slicing can be easily achieved without modifying basestation schedulers. We instantiate a prototype of CellSlice on a Picochip WiMAX testbed. Through both prototype evaluation and simulations, we demonstrate that CellSlice's performance for both remote uplink and remote downlink slicing is close to that of NVS. CellSlice's design is access-technology independent, and hence can be equally applicable to LTE, LTE-Advanced and WiMAX networks. © 2013 IEEE.