Network Slicing Management for 5G Radio Access Networks Adamuz Hinojosa, Óscar Ramón López Soler, Juan Manuel Ameigeiras Gutiérrez, Pablo José Universidad de Granada. Programa de Doctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación Network slicing 5G Radio Access Networks This thesis has been supported by the following projects and grants: • Programa de Formación de Profesorado Universitario (FPU) grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (FPU Grant ref. 17/01844). • National Research Project TEC2016-76795-C6-4-R “5G-CITY: Adaptive Management of 5G Services to Support Critical Events in Cities” funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund. • National Research Project PID2019-108713RB-C53 “TRUE5G: Towards Zero Touch Network and Services for beyond 5G” funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund. • European Research Project 871428 “5G-CLARITY: Beyond 5G multitenant private networks integrating Cellular, WiFi and LiFi, Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Intent Based Policy” funded by H2020 research program. To address this objective, this thesis first analyzes how NFV allows the MNO to manage the lifecycle of those RAN slice’s network functions which are virtualized. Among all the lifecycle operations, this dissertation focuses on the scaling operation. The reason is the scaling operation comprises the main NFVMANO management procedures, i.e., adding/removing the virtualized resources of a VNF instance, and deploying/terminating a VNF instance. In this thesis, we specifically analyze the different procedures the NFV-MANO may trigger to automatically scale VNFs. Furthermore, we also propose an ETSI-NFV compliant workflow that clarifies the interactions and information exchanges between the NFV-MANO entities for one representative scaling procedure. The second step to design a 3GPP/ETSI-NFV-based architectural framework for RAN slicing is to link the 3GPP and NFV templates to automate the lifecycle management of RAN slices. To that end, we propose a description model that harmonizes the 3GPP and ETSI-NFV viewpoints on RAN slicing. Specifically, our model aims to enable the customization and deployment of the virtualized RAN slice’s constituents over a multi-cellular environment. The proposed solution benefits from the reusability provided by the NFV descriptors to define the underlying resources of the RAN slice’s constituents. To customize the behavior of a RAN slice, the most representative radio parameters to configure its functionalities have been identified. Furthermore, to facilitate the comprehension of the proposal, we also provide an example of the description of three RAN slices for eMBB, mMTC and uRLLC services. El objetivo principal de este proyecto de tesis es estudiar mecanismos de gestión para automatizar el despliegue y orquestación de network slices en la red de acceso radio bajo un marco de referencia arquitectónico basado en las especificaciones del 3GPP y ETSI-NFV. 2022-05-24T06:39:27Z 2022-05-24T06:39:27Z 2022 2022-04-29 info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis Adamuz Hinojosa, Óscar Ramón. Network Slicing Management for 5G Radio Access Networks. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2022. [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/74957] 9788411173377 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/74957 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 España Universidad de Granada