Joint VNF-Provisioning and Virtual Topology Design in 5G Optical Metro Networks

Abstract

5G technology will provide networks with high-bandwidth, low latency and multitenancy. The integration of computing and storage resources in the edge of the fronthaul network, i.e., multi-access edge computing (MEC), will allow to instantiate some virtual network functions (VNF) in those computing resources. The backhaul of 5G networks will be based on optical technology, in particular WDM, due to its high capacity and flexibility. In this paper, we analyse the problem of VNF-provisioning in a metro ring-topology network equipped with MEC resources and with a WDM network connecting the edge nodes. In contrast to previous proposals, the method decides where VNFs must be instantiated but also the design of the virtual topology for the WDM metro network in order to reduce the service blocking ratio and the number of resources in operation.