An extensible network slicing framework for satellite integration into 5G

With the imminent deployment of the 5th generation (5G) mobile network in the nonstand-alone version, some researches focus on network slicing to fully exploit the 5G infrastructure and achieve a highest level of flexibility in the network. This level of flexibility offered by the network slicing paradigm also fits the need of satellite networks in which satellite network operators (SNOs) want to offer 5G connectivity services additionally to the traditional satellite connectivity. However, the work that has been done so far for network slicing in 5G does not directly apply to satellite networks due to satellite architecture specificities and thus needs to be extended. We extend the work on network slicing and this paper proposes a novel Satellite Slicing Framework in order to fully exploit the satellite infrastructure and to facilitate the integration of satellite services into 5G. Our framework includes defining, modeling, orchestrating, and deploying multiple satellite network slices and their associated network services on top of mutualized satellite infrastructures.