Modeling the Resource Allocation in 5G Radio Access Networks with Network Slicing

Network Slicing (NS) is one of the technologies considered a pillar of 5G networks. It allows the division of the physical infrastructure of a network into several isolated logical networks (slices). The slices can have different sizes and be offered to other use cases. We analyze the radio resource allocation problem through a random access channel model considering the radio access network (RAN) with NS in a steady state. We perform an in-depth study of the random access procedure (RAP) to optimize resource allocation in a 5G RAN with NS. We focus on assigning subsets of preambles for each slice depending on the service's priority. The main contributions of our work are the following: i) A model for a scenario of n slices; that is, it has no limitation for the number of use cases. ii) An efficient RAP resource allocation policy to maximize the probability of successful access by UEs in each slice.