SLICING ARCHITECTURE FOR WIRELESS COMMUNICATION

• US 20170079059A1
• Filed: 02/29/2016
• Published: 03/16/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 09/11/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Intel IP Corporation (Intel Corporation)
• Inventors: Li, Qian, Niu, Huaning, Wu, Geng, Fong, Mo-Han, Papathanassiou, Apostolos
• Granted Patent: US 9,775,045 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 16/02 Resource partitioning among network components, e.g. reuse partitioning
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/02 Arrangements for optimising operational condition
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/085 Access point devices with remote components

Abstract

Embodiments provide a system, apparatus, or non-transitory computer readable medium to provide a slicing architecture for wireless communications systems.

Claims

1. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums that store instructions for execution by one or more processors to perform wireless communications operations, the operations, when executed by the one more processors, to:

perform horizontal computation resource slicing of a plurality of computation resources; and

perform sharing and computation offloading via the plurality of computation resources according to any horizontal computation resource slice.

2. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 1, wherein the wireless communications system comprises a sliceable radio access network (RAN) architecture, and the operations further comprise operations to:

manage, via a RAN control entity, a control plane (c-plane) and a user plane (u-plane) of underlay RAN slices.

3. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 2, the operations further comprise operations to:

identify an association of a c-plane slice; and

identify an association of a single u-plane slice and the c-plane slice.

4. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 1, the operations further comprise operations to:

identify a first association of a first local component of a Radio Access Network (RAN) and a second remote component of the RAN, the first association corresponding to a network slice; and

identify a second association of the first local component of the RAN and a third component of the RAN that is different than the second component of the RAN, the second association corresponding to the network slice;

wherein the second association is based on at least one of traffic type, traffic load, or a Quality of Service (QoS) requirement.

5. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 1, the operations further comprise operations to:

provide mobile broadband (MBB) access and dedicated access for vertical markets or underlay networks.

6. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 1, the operations further comprise operations to:

execute baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) function partition to enable network slicing with different deployment scenarios.

7. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 6, wherein the one or more processors are included in an apparatus for an evolved nodeB (eNB), and the operations further comprise operations to:

perform baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) function partition utilizing, at least in part, scheduling information for each network slice.

8. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 1, the operations further comprise operations to:

perform hypervisor operations for a computation platform;

provide a radio link to couple modem circuitry at a client device and a host device, the modem circuitry to include radio access technology (RAT) circuitry; and

connect the computation platform at the client device and the host device via one or more containers.

9. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 1, the operations further comprise operations to:

execute vertical computation resource slicing of the plurality of computation resources.

10. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums of claim 9, wherein at least one of a horizontal network slice or a vertical network slice is to comprise:

a core network slice;

or

an air interface slice.

11. One or more apparatuses for a wireless communications system, comprising:

circuitry to execute horizontal computation resource slicing of a plurality of computation resources; and

circuitry to execute sharing and computation offloading via the plurality of computation resources according to any horizontal computation resource slice.

12. The one or more apparatuses of claim 11, wherein the wireless communications system comprises a sliceable radio access network (RAN) architecture, and further comprise:

a RAN control entity managing a control plane (c-plane) and a user plane (u-plane) of underlay RAN slices.

13. The one or more apparatuses of claim 12, further comprising:

circuitry to identify an association of a c-plane slice; and

circuitry to identify an association of a single u-plane slice and the c-plane slice.

14. The one or more apparatuses of claim 11, further comprising:

circuitry to identify a first association of a first local component of a Radio Access Network (RAN) and a second remote component of the RAN, the first association corresponding to a network slice; and

circuitry to identify a second association of the first local component of the RAN and a third component of the RAN that is different than the second component of the RAN, the second association corresponding to the network slice;

wherein the second association is based on at least one of traffic type, traffic load, or a Quality of Service (QoS) requirement.

15. The one or more apparatuses of claim 11, further comprising:

circuitry to support mobile broadband (MBB) access and dedicated access for vertical markets or underlay networks.

16. The one or more apparatuses of claim 11, further comprising:

circuitry to execute baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) function partition to enable network slicing with different deployment scenarios.

17. The one or more apparatuses of claim 16, wherein the one or more apparatuses are of an evolved nodeB (eNB) to perform baseband unit (BBU) and remote radio head (RRH) function partition utilizing, at least in part, scheduling information for each network slice.

18. The one or more apparatuses of claim 11, further comprising:

hypervisor circuitry included in a computation platform;

radio access technology (RAT) circuitry included in a modem circuitry;

a radio link to couple the modem circuitry at a client device and a host device; and

container circuitry to connect the computation platform at the client device and the host device.

19. The one or more apparatuses of claim 11, further comprising:

circuitry to execute vertical computation resource slicing of the plurality of computation resources.

20. The one or more apparatuses of claim 19, wherein at least one of a horizontal network slice or a vertical network slice comprises:

a core network slice;

or

an air interface slice.