An elastic resource allocation algorithm enabling wireless network virtualization

Following the wired network virtualization, virtualization of wireless networks becomes the next step aiming to provide network or infrastructure providers with the ability to manage and control their networks in a more dynamic fashion. The benefit of the wireless mobile network virtualization is a more agile business model where virtual mobile network operators (MNOs) can request and thus pay physical MNOs in a more pay-as-you-use manner. This paper presents some resource allocation algorithms for joint network virtualization and resource allocation of wireless networks. The overall algorithm involves the following two major processes: firstly, to virtualize a physical wireless network into multiple slices, each representing a virtual network, and secondly, to carry out physical resource allocation within each virtual network (or slice). In particular, the paper adopts orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) as its physical layer to achieve more efficient resource utilization. Therefore, the resource allocation is conducted in terms of sub-carriers. Although the motivation and algorithm design are based on IEEE 802.16 or WiMAX networks, the principle and algorithmic essence are also applicable to other OFDM access-based wireless networks. The aim was to achieve the following design goals: virtual network isolation and resource efficiency. The latter is measured in terms of network throughput and packet delivery ratio. The simulation results show that the aforementioned goals have been achieved.