New Network Slicing Scheme for UE Association Solution in 5G Ultra Dense HetNets

Network slicing (NS) will have an essential role to enhance the isolation and the flexibility of the future generation of cellular networks (5G) with heterogeneous capabilities, notably in ultra-dense (UD) urban zones. Thus, it may be the principal component necessary to respond to 5G UD heterogeneous networks (UD-HetNets) technical requirements. The aim of this paper is to propose a new NS architecture to resolve user equipment (UE)-association problem in 5G UD-HetNets. Accordingly, we formulated the problem as a one-to-many matching game based on matching theory, while exploiting the isolation character of slicing to eliminate interferences between pico-cells and those among macro-cell and pico-cells. Next, we proposed the UE-slice association algorithm (U-S.AA) to find the stable matching among user equipments (UEs) and different network slices. Numerical simulation results validate our theoretical model, and prove the efficient of the proposed user-slice association solution to enhance the global network performance, respecting the UEs quality of service (QoS), as well as improving the energy efficiency (EE) of UEs. © 2020 IEEE.