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.
Abstract
Virtualization in 5G and beyond networks enables the creation of virtual networks (i.e., network slices) tailored to the needs of different applications. To maximize revenue under limited infrastructure resources, InPs must decide in real time whether to admit incoming slice requests (SRs) based on their resource demands and offered values, while accounting for the opportunity cost of consuming scarce resources. To address this challenge, we introduce Online Pricing-based Slice Admission Control and Resource Allocation (OPA) framework. This framework dynamically assigns pseudo-prices to resources that capture long-term scarcity and anticipated inter-temporal opportunity costs. The short-term admission and resource allocation decisions for each SR are then guided by these prices. Additionally, we design an exponential pricing strategy that guarantees bounded worst-case performance. To improve practical performance, we further develop a data-driven exponential pricing approach that learns from historical data. Evaluations on a real-world network topology show that it improves mean revenue by 32.2% and 26.7% over state-of-the-art DRL and optimization-based approaches, respectively, while reducing computational cost by an order of magnitude relative to the latter.
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.
Asim Zoulkarni, C. Papagianni, Georgios Iosifidis et al.· International Mediterranean...· 0 citations
Compute and memory resources in cloud environments are strictly managed and isolated by the control plane; in contrast, network resources lack equivalent management and isolation mechanisms. This best-effort treatment of networking leads to significant challenges for modern AI workloads, which have diverse and bandwidth-intensive communication patterns. Without fine-grained network resource control, these workloads suffer from interference, unpredictable throughput, and suboptimal cluster utilization. To address these issues, this paper demonstrates how network bandwidth can be elevated to a first-class, schedulable, and enforceable resource within Kubernetes, the de facto standard for cloud-native orchestration. We introduce a new scheduling capability that models network interfaces as allocatable resources and regulates bandwidth sharing through the Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) framework, with enforcement implemented using the Hierarchical Token Bucket (HTB) mechanism. We evaluate the system using multitenant AI workloads derived from real-world communication characteristics with a simulation-based approach and validate the proposed enforcement strategy in a real cluster. Results show that the proposed two-level bandwidth allocation improves tenant performance predictability and satisfaction while maintaining packed cluster utilization.
JointCloud environments, including multi-cloud and federated cloud systems, increasingly rely on high-performance networks (HPNs) to support large-scale cross-cloud data transfers. In such settings, advance bandwidth reservation with timedependent pricing is essential for cost-efficient and predictable data movement, where the transfer cost depends on both dynamic link prices and path reconfiguration overhead. This paper investigates the optimal scheduling of the VPFB BRR-MinC, where VPFB (Variable Path, Fixed Bandwidth) allows routing paths to change across time slots while maintaining a constant reserved bandwidth, and BRR-MinC seeks a minimum-cost schedule for deadline-constrained data transfers. We formalize a timedependent cost model incorporating slot-varying edge weights and switching penalties, and prove that the problem is NPcomplete. To address the temporal coupling introduced by switching costs, we develop a segmentation-based dynamic programming framework and propose a scalable heuristic, Heu-VPFB-MinC-TD-S. Simulation results on an ESnet-inspired topology show that the proposed method achieves identical feasibility while reducing total transfer cost compared with a greedy baseline, at the expense of moderate additional runtime. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of segmentation-aware optimization for cost-efficient cross-cloud data transfer in JointCloud systems.
Liudong Zuo, Pan Lai, Michelle Zhu et al.· Fall Joint Computer Conferen...· 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
This formulation provides a rigorous and tractable framework for distributed spectrum sharing in 6G O-RAN systems, with the potential to support intelligent and adaptive control in future wireless networks.
E. Spyrou, Chrysostomos D. Stylios, V. Kappatos et al.· Future Internet· 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