SO-RAN: Dynamic RAN Slicing via Joint Functional Splitting and MEC Placement

Abstract—Next-Generation (NG) mobile networks are expected
to revolutionize wireless communication systems,
facilitating the deployment of critical applications with stringent
Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Multi-access
Edge Computing (MEC) and Radio Access Network (RAN)
slicing are considered vital mechanisms of upcoming NG
systems as they allow creation of end-to-end isolated RAN
slices and increase of serving mobile data traffic on edge.
The efficient deployment of RAN functions promises flexible
and disaggregated architectures for the diversified needs of
NG networks. In this work, we propose a novel optimization
approach that minimizes RAN/MEC economic costs and
maximizes served traffic. This framework creates isolated
RAN slices by optimal placement of RAN and MEC functions
per slice, which solves the problem of operating cost-efficient
edge networks and increases the served traffic with diverse
QoS requirements. We first formulate our framework as
a convex and linear problem and then decompose it using
a distributed method that accelerates the performance and
guarantees the optimal global solution. Our results show that
our proposed work better uses the spectrum, and there is
a trade-off between the achieved throughput and the cost
incurred to the network.
Index Terms—5G, 6G, Multiple-access Edge Computing
(MEC), Functional Splitting, RAN Slicing, Network Virtualization.