Scope

Network slicing has been standing as one of the key enabling technologies for the upcoming 5^th Generation of Telecommunications. Alongside other important technologies, such as NFV, SDN and MEC, its contributions to isolated network provisioning in a more dynamic and flexible way are being pursued in different industry and academia arenas throughout the world. Nonetheless, considering the wide range of foreseen enhanced use cases (not only in scope of 5G but also Beyond-5G), slicing aspects have been mostly targeting either enhancements at the radio level, or the integration of cloud resourcing capabilities for supporting network operation at the core and/or the edge. As such, there is a wide gap related with the impact that such slicing-based procedures will exert over mobility management processes for seamless mobility support while the devices, network or services move both physically (i.e., change their network point of attachment) as well as virtually (i.e., between slices). It is evident that a vast majority of access to on-line services is done while on the move, and considers not only human-to-machine communications (such as ultra-HD video conferencing and other services) but also machine-to-machine communications (such as vehicles and drones/UAV’s for Internet of Things scenarios). The objective of the MOBISLICE workshop is to foster the ideas of slice-based designs and technologies in mobile scenarios and assess their impact, proposing solutions and enhancements to their efficient, dynamic and elastic support.

5G networks design and evolution is considered as a key to support the introduction of digital technologies in economic and societal processes, leading to the fourth industrial revolution, which is impacting multiple sectors. To fulfil the set of identified requirements and -in parallel- to take into account the peculiarities associated with each vertical industry, 5G networks have to be operated by intelligent orchestration platforms able to support end-to-end applications and services provision over a programmable network, compute and storage infrastructure. By leveraging virtualization and softwarization technologies, developers and operators have to better match needs and capabilities, building application-aware networks and network-aware applications. Towards this direction, the main technical focus of the 5GNetApp workshop regards the presentation of approaches tackling design, development and orchestration aspects of both network applications and network services, focusing on one hand on the interplay among intelligent orchestration mechanisms in both levels (applications and network services orchestration) and, on the other hand, on validation and verification mechanisms of the developed software. Edge computing synergy with NFV and SDN, Separation of concerns among Intelligent Application and Network Services Orchestration and Validation and Verification of Network Services and VNFs are within the core aspects tackled in the workshop.

Program

The event will be structured in the following way:

Keynote

Prof. Dr. Antonio Capone

Title: New scenarios for resource slicing and sharing in beyond 5G networks

The introduction of 5G is radically changing the mobile network architecture with new instruments for virtualizing most of the basic network functions, facilitating the programmability of application specific functions both at network core and edge, and partitioning the radio access and transport resources so as to optimize the support of a large set of vertical application scenarios. This evolution has required a big research effort to tackle non-trivial technological problems. However, the new scenario is stimulating quite big changes in the economic relations and in the roles of mobile market players, that require new flexible solutions for the allocation of infrastructure and transmission resources to competing operators. The system evolution beyond 5G is then expected to provide new solutions that enable the coexistence of multiple and autonomous decision entities often pursuing conflicting objectives.

This talk will make a link between the technical instruments for network slicing and virtualization on one side and the models for analysing the competition between market players for acquiring the resources for running their applications and serve their customers. It will also make the case for a new approach to infrastructure sharing for mobile networks based on the idea that network resources, both at the wireless access and the core network, can be traded dynamically on a real-time market where virtual operators or tenants compete to obtain the resources to serve their users.

Important Dates and Information

The workshop will be helf on the 27th November, 2018, in conjunction with the IV IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks

Special Issue on Wiley's "Internet Technology Letters"

Improved versions of selected contributions will be invited for possible inclusion in a Special Section of Wiley’s "Internet Technology Letters".

Best Paper Award

Our top quality TPC will sellect a BEST PAPER and present the respective Award Certificate at a ceremony during the workshop session.