Patent ID: 11956763
Assignee: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 15:
16. A system of allocating radio access network (RAN) spectrum resources among a plurality of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) of a network of base stations, each base station operative to transmit and receive signals over a coverage area, comprising:
a computer system comprising one or more processors and memory, and machine-readable instructions stored in the memory that upon execution by the one or more processors cause the system to carry out operations comprising:
determining a slicing enforcement policy comprising assigning a set of one or more resource blocks (RBs) to each MVNO according to a slicing policy in which each MVNO is allocated an amount of the spectrum resources on at least one base station in a determined time span, each resource block including a number of available frequency units and time slots of the spectrum resources, subject to minimizing interference between each MVNO's set of RBs with another MVNO's set of RBs on an interfering base station, wherein adjacent base stations are interfering when coverage areas of the adjacent base stations overlap;
generating a RAN slicing enforcement problem (RSEP) comprising:
determining a feasible slicing enforcement policy that maximizes a total number of linked RBs allocated to MVNOs that request a highest amount of resource blocks on multiple interfering base stations, wherein the linked RBs have a same frequency unit and a same time slot in interfering base stations, and
determining non-zero entries of matrices of elements representing interfering base station, a number of RBs, a number of time slots and a number of MVNOs;

assigning the RBs to the MVNOs according to the RSEP; and
allocating the resource blocks of the spectrum resources to each MVNO based on the slicing enforcement policy.