Towards the optimal orchestration of service function chains to enable ultra-reliable low latency communication in an NFV-enabled network
The growing utilization of Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC) in 5G/6G networks, the Internet of Things (IoT), and fixed-line networks has considerably increased the significance of reliability and latency requirements within the telecommunications sector. Communication Service Providers (CSPs) encounter emerging challenges in optimizing reliability and latency to support Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Applications (URLLA). These applications include autonomous driving, remote surgery, tele-operated driving, and virtual reality. Simultaneously enhancing both reliability and latency poses a significant challenge, as enhancing reliability may potentially lead to increased latency. Furthermore, the limited availability of physical network resources increases the complexity of this endeavor. The goal of this study is to address URLLC in an NFV-enabled network. After analyzing state-of-the-art studies in the field of NFV (see Chapter 2), we identified a crucial research obstacle. Consequently, we defined our goal to simultaneously optimize reliability and latency in the SFC deployment phase. We offer a novel and efficient SFC embedding technique that aims to enhance the reliability and latency of URLLA simultaneously. Mathematically, we formulate the SFC deployment problem as an integer-linear-programming optimization model to obtain exact numerical solutions. More information can be found in Chapter 4. In our optimization model, we propose an adjustable priority coefficient factor and flow prioritization to reserve a portion of physical network resources (bandwidth, RAM memory, and CPU) exclusively for embedding URLLA to significantly optimize their deployment paths. Since obtaining exact numerical solutions is time-consuming, we provide a set of heuristics and relaxed versions for addressing the scalability issue, reducing execution time, and producing results that are close to optimal for large-scale network topologies. Chapter 5 provides further information about heuristic approaches. In this study, we explore both static and dynamic service function chaining; further information is provided in Chapter 1. The performance evaluations reveal that our proposed algorithms considerably outperform the existing approaches in terms of end-to-end delay, reliability, bandwidth consumption, and SFC acceptance rate. See Chapter 6 for more details.