Network Slicing: Market Mechanism and Competitive Equilibria

Towards addressing spectral scarcity and enhancing resource utilization in 5G networks, network slicing is a promising technology to establish end-to-end virtual networks without requiring additional infrastructure investments. By leveraging Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), we can realize slices completely isolated and dedicated to satisfy the users' diverse Quality of Service (QoS) prerequisites and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This paper focuses on the technical and economic challenges that emerge from the application of the network slicing architecture to real-world scenarios. We consider a market where multiple Network Providers (NPs) own the physical infrastructure and offer their resources to multiple Service Providers (SPs). Then, the SPs offer those resources as slices to their associated users. We propose a holistic iterative model for the network slicing market along with a clock auction that converges to a robust $\epsilon$-competitive equilibrium. At the end of each cycle of the market, the slices are reconfigured and the SPs aim to learn the private parameters of their users. Numerical results are provided that validate and evaluate the convergence of the clock auction and the capability of the proposed market architecture to express the incentives of the different entities of the system.