Jul 2026· International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking· pp. 1-6· 0 citations· 21 references
Abstract
Real-time inter-slice resource allocation in the Radio Access Network (RAN) is a critical control function in 5G and emerging 6G networks, where the scheduler in the Distributed Unit (DU) dynamically allocates physical resources, namely Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs), to different network slices to meet their diverse Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. To address the need for faster and more flexible radio resource management, and inspired by recent efforts to extend the O-RAN architecture with a real-time controller, we investigate slice-level PRB allocation through the lens of online learning. We formulate inter-slice scheduling as a dynamic decision problem and develop a system model that captures per-slice Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements and throughput variations over configurable time windows, without assuming future channel knowledge. Our scheduling solution is implemented as a real-time RAN control application, in line with the O-RAN proposition for dApps that are programmable and distributed software components for fine-grained control in O-RAN DUs (O-DUs) and Centralized Units (O-CUs). The proposed approach adapts inter-slice radio resource allocations based on telemetry, with low computational complexity. Experimental results show sublinear dynamic regret, up to 85% fewer SLA violations than static baselines, and submillisecond amortized control overhead. Overall, these findings highlight dynamic-benchmark online control as a practical mechanism for real-time, SLA-aware slicing in O-RAN.
This work introduces Online Pricing-based Slice Admission Control and Resource Allocation (OPA) framework, which dynamically assigns pseudo-prices to resources that capture long-term scarcity and anticipated inter-temporal opportunity costs and designs an exponential pricing strategy that guarantees bounded worst-case performance.
Muhammad Sulaiman, Bo Sun, M. A. Salahuddin et al.· 0 citations
This paper proposes a Service Level Agreement (SLA)-aware resource allocation framework for 6G V2X slicing, realized as a Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) based xApp within the Open-Radio Access Network (O-RAN) near-realtime-RAN Intelligent Controller (near-RT-RIC). The xApp dynamically distributes radio resources across heterogeneous slices, minimizing SLA violations while considering fairness and throughput efficiency. Unlike heuristic or single-metric Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) methods, our design incorporates deadline awareness and service reliability directly into the reward formulation. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme consistently outperforms fixed, random, proportional, and Exponential moving Average (EMA)-based baselines, improving average packet delivery ratio (PDR), reducing mean SLA violations, and achieving a Pareto-optimal trade-off between throughput and compliance. These findings demonstrate the potential of O-RAN-native intelligent control for future 6G networks.
M. Tariq, Deepak Singh, M. Saad et al.· International Conference on...· 0 citations
A QoE-aware framework for Multi-Access Edge Computing-enabled Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architectures, combining a graph attention network (GAT) encoder, distributed multi-agent DRL, and privacy-preserving FL, while transitioning control from Quality of Service (QoS) to QoE metrics is proposed.
Manoj Prasad Kunasegran, Wai Leong Pang, S. K. Phang· IEEE Access· 0 citations
Efficient coexistence of eMBB and URLLC services remains a critical challenge in AI-native Radio Access Networks (RANs). This paper proposes a two-timescale Hierarchical Reward Weighting (HRW) framework based on multiobjective reinforcement learning for context-aware O-RAN slicing under a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP) formulation. The proposed architecture separates long-term policy adaptation from fast-timescale radio scheduling, mitigating the non-stationarity inherent in multiobjective RAN optimization. At the slow layer, a non-realtime RIC rApp exploits a long-term network context and a differentiable Softmax mapping to adapt slice reward preferences. These policies are propagated through the $O$ -RAN control hierarchy to guide downstream scheduling decisions. At the fast layer, decentralized scheduling agents embedded within the Open Distributed Unit (O-DU) MAC layer execute sub-millisecond Physical Resource Block (PRB) allocation and packet preemption, avoiding near-RT RIC transport latency constraints. Evaluated under a multiuser MIMO-OFDMA environment, the proposed framework improves resource utilization by up to 60.8% over static partitioning while maintaining bounded URLLC tail-latency behavior and strict Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. The results demonstrate the feasibility of AI-native hierarchical O-RAN control and align with the ITU-T visions for autonomous 6G RAN intelligence.
Charles Ssengonzi, Okuthe P. Kogeda, T. Olwal· 2026 ITU Kaleidoscope - AI a...· 0 citations
Network slicing is an enabling technology of fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks that enables several autonomous logical networks to exist on a common physical infrastructure. One key issue of the paradigm is the admission control mechanism which slice requests are accepted to achieve the best performance of the system and still ensure quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. In this paper, the authors provide a comparative study of the current methods of admission control and introduce a new approach, Priority-Aware Deep Q-Network with Dynamic Threshold Adaptation (PA-DQN-DTA). Our method (as opposed to the traditional methods which tie admission control to resource allocation) addresses intelligent admission decisions only. The suggested scheme uses inter-slice and intra-slice priorities via a mathematically defined admission probability functional. The outcomes of simulation in four assessment scenarios show that parameter calibration is of the essence: the balanced configuration reaches acceptance ratios of 11.812.9, and QoE in all scenarios is above 98.8%. Besides, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of parameter tuning and describes the space of tradeoffs between the acceptance ratio, the QoE preservation, and the resource usage. Concrete recommendations are made and implications to the realistic 5G deployment are discussed.
A. S. Mahore, C. N. Deshmukh· International Conference Com...· 0 citations
A new paradigm for satisfying the ever-growing demands of real-time Sixth Generation (6G) applications is Mobile Edge Computing (MEC). Additionally, base stations and Internet of Things devices that incorporate renewable energy harvesting capabilities have the potential to lower grid energy use. To maximize system potential and lower carbon emissions, it is crucial to make effective decisions about job offloading and resource allocation. A carbon-aware MEC architecture that uses both grid and renewable energy sources is proposed in this paper. Our goal is to jointly manage resource allocation and task offloading while monitoring carbon emissions and task queue delays to optimize system behavior under uncertainty, specifically for stochastic workloads and variable renewable generation. To balance these two cost components (emissions and queue length), we create a combined optimization problem. We develop a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-based joint optimization technique to address this issue in a constantly changing environment. In the optimization, we consider greedy policy (GP) and full offloading (FO), as well as time-average carbon emission (TACE) and time-average queue length (TAQL) as performance metrics, and time-average queue length (TAQL) and full execution (FE) as baseline strategies; we also evaluate normalized time-average cumulative reward (NTACR). This method uses continuous-action reinforcement learning to generate efficient, real-time control policies. For the proposed MEC network, numerical statistics show that our approach can lead to effective offloading and lower carbon emissions.
M. Saeed, Rashid A Saeed, M. A. Ahmed et al.· 2026 6th International Confe...· 0 citations