Optimized Energy Aware 5G Network Function Virtualization

Abstract: In this paper, network function virtualization (NFV) is identified as a promising key technology that can contribute to energy-efficiency improvement in 5G networks. an optical network supported architecture is proposed and investigated in this work to provide the wired infrastructure needed in 5G networks and to support NFV towards an energy efficient 5G networks. In this architecture the mobile core network functions as well as baseband function are virtualized and provided as VMs. the impact of the total number of active users in the network, backhaul/fronthaul configurations and VM inter-traffic are investigated. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) optimising model is developed with the objective of minimising the total power consumption by optimizing the VMs location and VMs servers' utilisation. The MILP model results show that virtualization can result in up to 38% (average 34) energy saving. The results also reveal how the total number of active users affects the baseband VMs optimal distribution whilst the core network VMs distribution is affected mainly by the inter-traffic between the VMs. For real-time implementation, two heuristics are developed an Energy Efficient NFV without CNVMs inter-traffic (EENFVnoITr) heuristic and an Energy Efficient NFV with CNVMs inter-traffic (EENFVwithITr) heuristic, both produce comparable results to the optimal MILP results