The Location Problem for the Provisioning of Protected Slices in NFV-Based MEC Infrastructure

The support of stringent requirements such as ultra-low latency and ultra-reliability of the forthcoming 5G services poses several challenges to telecommunications infrastructure providers. Network Function Virtualization, multi-access edge computing (MEC), and network slicing capabilities can help the support of such requirements. However, a trade-off between the cost of resource deployment and the support of service requirements needs to be taken into account in the design of NFV-based 5G networks. In this paper, we investigate the MEC location problem, which aims at selecting locations to place MECs hosting protected slices. We propose a MEC location problem enhanced with 1: 1 and $1:N$ protection schemes for the provisioning of protected slices. In the 1: 1 scheme, protection is assured by reserving a backup slice for each tenant, whereas in the $1:N$ scheme, a backup slice is shared among $N$ tenants. The problem is modeled as a multi-criteria optimization problem and solved by the employment of a multi-objective evolutionary non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm. A comparison between the 1: 1 and $1:N$ protection schemes is carried out in the context of 5G network slicing. Results show that the protection scheme 1: 1 can reduce the response time, at a higher deployment cost when compared to the $1:N$ scheme.