Computers and Electrical Engineering 101 (2022) 107962

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Computers and Electrical Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compeleceng

SoftDrone: Softwarized 5G assisted drone networks for dynamic

resource sharing using machine learning techniques✩ , ✩✩
Deborsi Basu a ,∗,1 ,2 , Soumyadeep Kal a ,1 ,3 , Uttam Ghosh b ,∗,1 ,4 , Raja Datta a ,1 ,3
a Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India
b Meharry School of Applied Computational Sciences, Nashville, TN, USA

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The concept of a programmable network instantiates dedicated network slices for Unmanned
Network slicing Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based on-demand communication layers which improve the efficiency of
VNF overall network performance. With the increasing random service demands, network resource
SDN
allocation, retention, and release have become serious networking challenges. Often existing
5G
methods consider dedicated resource allocations which result in poor resource utilization as
NFV
Slice coordination
well as service quality. Though Machine Learning (ML) techniques are being used for better
UAV performance, limited energy constraints and complexity in resource cycle management become
a critical matter of fact again. To resolve these issues, we propose service-specific learning
models on VNF (Virtual Network Function) data that are running on shared network slices. The
results show an average reduction of 35% error from state-of-the-art techniques. This improved
performance can further reduce chances of over or under allocation of resources which could
lead to severe service denials to time-critical applications in the areas of disaster management,
e-healthcare applications, etc.

1. Introduction

Network slicing has advanced rapidly in recent years, giving unique strategies for efficient resource management schemes in
upcoming 5G or 5th generation of communication networks. The virtualization of radio access network (RAN) resources is one of
the most significant integration that allow the operators to explore the concept of Network Slicing (NS). The concept of network
slicing is the creating, managing, accessing, maintaining, upgrading and deleting of logical network resources in a form of layers
dedicated for user specific applications. The virtual network resources can be shared among several PoAs (Point of Accesses) by
leveraging the concept of NS and by taking into account the demands of growing user services. The dynamic creation of virtual
slices provokes the existing PoAs with overburdened service demands to request more entities from their neighbouring PoAs to satisfy
the increasing application demands. The limited existence of hardware resources creates severe hindrance towards demand specific

✩ This paper is for special section VSI-suav. Reviews were processed by Guest Editor Dr. Bhisham Sharma and recommended for publication.
✩✩ In this work, we demonstrate a flexible UAV network (𝐷 ) formation of through a new type of URLL resource sharing approach using data sets from
𝑖𝑛𝑓
SDNZoo (Peuster et al., 2019). Different ML algorithms are used to do the comparative analysis and converge to a optimal solution.
∗ Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: deborsi.basu@iitkgp.ac.in (D. Basu), s.kal034@gmail.com (S. Kal), ughosh@mmc.edu (U. Ghosh), rajadatta@ece.iitkgp.ac.in (R. Datta).
1 All the authors have equal contribution in this work.
2 G. S. Sanyal School of Telecommunications, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India.
3 Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India.
4 Meharry School of Applied Computational Sciences, Nashville, TN, USA.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2022.107962
Received 29 October 2021; Received in revised form 22 March 2022; Accepted 24 March 2022
Available online 30 April 2022
0045-7906/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Basu et al. Computers and Electrical Engineering 101 (2022) 107962

Fig. 1. A generalized framework of vSDN-driven VNF (virtual network function) sharing for multi-tenant (TSPs: Telecommunication Service Providers)
environment.

service deliveries. To resolve this critical issue, the coordination between multiple NSs (network slices) of multiple application
domains (Vehicular communication, Industry layer, IoT or Internet of Things layer, UAV layer or Aerial communication, etc.) is
required. RAN technologies, including ground and aerial PoAs, can be utilized to build generic RAN infrastructure for future 5G
networks. In 5G-V2X (5G guided vehicle to everything network), RSUs can be used to provide the LTE-V2X (Long term evolution-
V2X) technology, while UAVs can parallelly act as the ARNs (Aerial Relay Nodes) [1,2]. Integrating the services not only improves
the QoNS (Quality of Network Services) but also improves the channel quality for efficient voice communication. The problem
of decreasing SINR (Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio) or poor channel condition can be neutralized to a certain extent. In
the case of 5G technology, the efficient allocation of available communication resources, known as resource blocks (RBs) [3], is a
significant difficulty that must be solved.
The generic infrastructure for vSDN-driven (virtualized Software-Defined Network-driven) VNF sharing is shown in Fig. 1.
The VNF instances can reside within the RBs or can be virtually created within the control layer. Each VNF instance within the
Communication Interface (CI) may be responsible for individual or integrated services that are managed by different TSPs. The
virtualization layer acts as the logical interface and creates shared frameworks over hardware resources. The O&M (Orchestration
and Management) of the control layer is done by TSPs depending on their respective network demands. Association with UAV
infrastructure is shown in Fig. 2.
NFV (Network Function Virtualization) drives us to virtualize network hardware in favour of generalized hardware like computers
or servers. It further reduces the cost of installation and maintenance by making the network infrastructure more flexible and
scalable. The virtual specialized elements are called VNFs (Virtual Network Functions). VNFs are installed on open computing
platforms that are primarily operated by dedicated and proprietary hardware technology. Controlling those VNFs becomes smooth
via the centralized networking architecture model called SDN or Software-Defined Networking. VNFs can be chained together to
provide multiple and diverse services simultaneously. VNFs helps in mobilizing network resources which further incurs power
efficiency and improvement in available physical storage inside infrastructure entities. As 5G started rolling into the picture, and
networking became more and more widespread, not just among people but also for the machine to machine communication (M2M)
and Machine to everything (M2X) [4,5]. Upon inspection, it was clear that the different types of communication had different
requirements and different criteria for maintaining the quality of service. So, the network could be logically sliced into such
categories to better fulfil their specialized needs and so the concept of network slicing came into being. All of these innovations
in SDN, NFV and network slicing all have the same goal of minimizing cost, obtaining more control over the network and
simultaneously recognizing the various demands of network users and catering to their needs to provide a better quality of service.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are playing a bigger role in helping 5G and beyond 5G (B5G) telecommunication networks [6].
Indeed, UAVs have the ability to meet the ever-increasing mobile data demands of such mobile networks while also providing
ubiquitous access to various types of wireless devices [7]. The UAV assistance network paradigm, on the other hand, faces a number
of critical concerns and challenges. The mobile characteristics of UAV networks cannot be speculated with abstract approximation.
The instances are needed to be highly coordinated in nature. The interoperability of multi-tier UAV networks faced low service
throughput and high service delay due to limited resources. It can use the MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) extensively to
reduce the response time but that further will create service denial if the network traffic is highly diverse. So, critical complexities
are there inside UAV guided communication networks [8,9]. Software-Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization
(NFV) are two promising technologies for efficiently managing and improving UAV assistance for the future generation of mobile
networks to meet all of these challenges [10]. There are no particular effective rules detailing the use cases of VNF placement in
the context of UAV based network slicing. The random demands of the data plane layer caused the dynamic selection of VNFs for
rapid service integrity. Incorporating the UAV level resources in the domain of user-centric applications will generate additional
advantages. Research is already going on in this domain but it is far from the notion of perfection as far as the QoS demands are

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D. Basu et al. Computers and Electrical Engineering 101 (2022) 107962

Fig. 2. The proposed virtualized Software-Defined Network Enabled Network Slicing model for URLLC UAV-guided resource provisioning.

concerned. Thus, we extend our interest to contribute to this domain. We have presented the system-level architecture with our
proposed ML-driven algorithmic solution for better training and testing experience while placing the VNF for slice coordination.

Motivation

The underlying shared network infrastructure is getting utilized by distributed and heterogeneous application domains. Due
to the diverse characteristics of such applications, the allocation of network resources is kept fixed. As a result, the under or
overutilization of resources occurs inside the network. The applications are service-driven. A network service consists of several
interconnected VNFs (Virtual Network Functions) that can be scaled on-demand and put at the accessible PoPs (Point of Presences)
in NFV containers. Dynamically scaling and placing the VNFs over hardware instances are difficult because they depend on multiple
crucial networking parameters such as the type of service, the category of the underlying network, and current user demands. One
of the most important aspects is URLLC service delivery within multiple NS environments. Allocation and reallocation scheduling
within extremely low latency are important matters of concern. Due to the high complexity and random networking behaviour, this
area draws the attention of eminent scientists. This also motivates us to contribute towards the development of a dynamic URLLC
VNF sharing model using the aerial–ground joint slice coordination approach. For better understanding, a detailed comparative
analysis of our proposed approach along with the state-of-the-art techniques is shown in Table 1. Through extensive research and
algorithm development are already going on, our contribution towards this emerging field specifically targets to provide efficient
services in the area of disaster management.
Contributions: The work primarily focus on two fundamental objectives. At first, the selective VNF formation on suitable
training–testing model on experimental data set is performed followed by flexible VNF allocation is done for better resource
utilization. The major contributions are listed as follows:

• We have developed a modular function flow of services considering time-critical network demands by integrating the dedicated
UAV slice to the data place instances for better aerial–ground service support.
• Next, we have employed a better machine learning regression algorithm to better predict resource requirements according to
network traffic load, error in prediction has been reduced by almost 35% from existing techniques.
• Next, The fitting time has been improved. The regression model now takes far less time to train the data than most of the
existing algorithms and approaches that have been already proposed in this area.
• The combined advantage of faster training of the model, combined with much more accurate resource requirement prediction
according to network traffic load provides a more robust and faster solution than most work that has been done so far.
• Finally, The models have been developed in a modular way and can be used in tandem with other VNF scaling and placement
algorithms to provide a more complete solution to VNF resource allocation and placement to optimize efficiency.

Paper organization: The manuscript has been organized as follows. Section 2 presented significant related research works on
VNF sharing over 5G-driven networks. The aerial–ground coordinated NS system model is explained in Section 3. Section 4 comprises
with the algorithmic solution and proposed technique. The comparative effectiveness of our approach is shown in Section 5 with
intensive result analysis. Finally, in Section 6 we conclude this work with some open future scopes.

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2. Related works

The interfaces between ground, space and air are heterogeneous in nature. The signal flow characteristics are diverse as well. The
selection of suitable VNF for service function chaining (SFC) is extremely necessary to restrict the improper utilization of network
resources. In [9] authors have shown the importance of such problems over versatile 5G aided application areas. SDN/NFV service
orchestration has witnessed a wide range of experimental outcomes in recent days [11,12].

2.1. Network slicing management and orchestration ( NS-MANO)

Slice service MANO is the area of fundamental interest among scientists for its high complex distributive nature and uncertain
behaviour [13]. Intensive research is on the way to optimizing the network resources efficiently. Dario Bega et al. in [14] proposed
a deep neural network architecture to build a stable monetary framework that can accurately map the underprovisioning and
overprovisioning of network resources. The capacity aware slice management is required to address the time-varying user demands of
the future 5G networks. However, service response for URLLC is a concern there. Samir Dawaliby et al. have proposed the distributed
slice MANO technique over large scale IoT, which was a solution to tackle the problem of scalability of network slices [15]. Contrary
to existing methods of network slicing management and orchestration that are based on single OSS/BSS combined with ETSI
MANO, the proposed algorithm used the ETSI MANO orchestration in combination with multiple deployed autonomous management
platforms in the slices. An expandable and flexible framework for orchestration and management of end to end network slices has
been proposed by Flavio Meneses et al. in [16]. Their focus was on the abstraction of the process of initialization or instantiation of
network slices. They have implemented the solution and experimentally evaluated using an in-house data centre using OpenStack
and Open Source MANO for interoperability and flexibility. In [17] Salvatore Costanzo et al. worked on configuration and resource
allocation in real-time using the SDN FlexRAN controller. They used the V2.0 version of FlexRAN, which provides a set of Northbound
RESTful APIs, enabling the split of the spectrum resources in different radio slices.

Table 1
The comparative analysis of the proposed approach with the state-of-the-art techniques.
Reference Area of Case Study Proposed Evaluation Factors Remarks
Contribution Algorithms
Service Accuracy Resource Usage Reliability
F. Meneses et al. Cloud Network Flamework Low Low High Instantiation
(2019) [16] networks Slice for Slice
MANO manage- of network
ment resources;
without
dynamic
allocation
I. Afolabi et al. E2E NS Scalable Proactive Low High Low Contribution
(2019) [13] Network and
Reactive for resource
resource allocation;
allocation not best for
URLLC
Applications
S. O. Oladejo et al. 5G HetNets Hierarchical Genetic Low Low Low URLLC
(2019) [18] Decom- Algorithm resource
position sharing;
Technique relaxed CPU

utilization
Y. Cui et al. (2020) Vehicular ML for Conv. High High Low Dynamic
[19] Network Network LSTM best
Slicing Models fit resource
allocation;
better QoS
S. Schneider et al. Network Dynamic ML High Low High Low
(2020) [20] Virtualization VNF Models accuracy
Allocation in network
service
quality
CurrentWork 5G guidedUAV Network Shared VNF allocation and placement ML over Network Slicing High High High Best fit
case over
real-time
application

2.2. Resource allocation over network slice orchestration technique

The in-air nodes (drones or UAVs) are the relay stations of the service flows. The flow classifications are done to prioritize URLLC
services for transmission via UAV guided data planes as shown in Fig. 2. Significant works have been done on classifying such flows
to build authentic SFCs using UAV instances. In [18] Sunday O. Oladejo et al. have addressed the resource allocation problem as
a maximum utility optimization problem. The solution proposed was a hierarchical decomposition technique along with a genetic
algorithm and the findings were analysed by extensive Monte Carlo numerical simulations. Yaping Cui et al. in [19] proposed a
machine learning-based solution for resource allocation. The traffic prediction mechanism was proposed based on Convolutional
Long Short-Term Memory and the resource allocation algorithm based on the ‘primal–dual interior-point method was used to solve

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the optimal slice weight allocation and to minimize the system delay. However, the work proposed is catered mainly towards
vehicular networks.

2.3. VNF sharing over dynamic NS using Machine Leaning (ML) Techniques

Haneul Ko et al. have proposed a Priority-based Dynamic Resource Allocation Scheme where the resource management agent
maintains some information such as priorities and demand profiles of slices based on which resources are dynamically allocated [21].
Karim Boutiba et al. have outlined the challenges and opportunities for network slicing in 5G networks and beyond and had also
talked about the role of machine learning in this area of networking [22]. Yuxiu Hua et al. solved the problem of resource allocation
by employing Deep Reinforcement Learning by taking the resource demand as the ‘state’ and the resource allocated as the ‘action’.
They generated the action value distribution function based on a Deep Distributional Q Network which was powered by a Generative
Adversarial Network. This was done to work better in the presence of distortion inside the network [23]. Stefan Schneider et al.
have used various machine learning models to predict the number of resources needed by VNF instances which were based on real
VNF data. The models were then used in tandem with joint VNF scaling and placement algorithm to determine the improvement
machine learning provided over static resource allocation to VNF [20]. Using extensive ML algorithms inside VNF selection increases
the chances of errors. The selection of correct VNF module is extremely essential to increase the QoS of the network. The above
mentioned works show limited contributions in the area of error minimization and low latency communication. There are wide
scopes of further improvements and hence we have developed an all new system model using slice coordination technique in this
work. The detailed system model analysis is shown in the following section.

3. System model & problem formulation

Fig. 3. The virtualized Software-Defined Network (vSDN) enabled network slicing model.

In this section, we have developed the core system interface that is used for aerial–ground slice coordination through VNF
sharing and placement. From the system model, as shown in Fig. 3, we can see that the first members in the model are the various
5G enabled network subscribers or users who tap into the 5G network through RATs (Radio Access Technology), be it wifi or
5G cellular data. The data packets to and from these users are now in the physical layer of the network. This physical layer will
contain the generalized hardware responsible for implementing NFV and they could be virtually sliced as well. After that is the
virtualization layer which actually virtualizes the network with the help of a hypervisor. The next step is where the actual resource
allocation work is done. In this module, the machine learning algorithms are put to use to predict how much CPU resources would
be required depending on the traffic load. The way this works with network slicing is that if a particular slice has low traffic, only
a small amount of CPU is allocated to it. Then again, if another slice uses the network, there will still be some CPU resources left
to service that request. After resource allocation, the final layer comes into play. Now that we have how many resources the VNFs
are going to need, the final piece of the puzzle is to place the VNFs in the network and instruct them to work with each other to
service a particular application and meet the SLA (service level agreement) associated with the network operator. VNF sharing or
co-ordination or joint VNFs can be used at this level and the deciding factors could be overall efficiency and delay of the network.

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Table 2
Parametric instances and values.
Parameters Significance and Units
CPU This resource is allocated to the VNF instances (it varies
between 0 and 1)
Traffic Load This is the network traffic load that each VNF is facing, this
also determines
the amount of required computing resources (measured in
Kbps)
RMSE Root Mean Square Error is the parameter that is used to
calculate the service
accuracy of the proposed approach with others.

Table 3
List of system parameters.
Significance Notations
Substrate Network for Graphical Representation  = (𝑉𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 , 𝐸𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 )
Linked node capacity 𝑐𝑣𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 ∈ 𝑉𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 ∀𝑣𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 ∈ 𝑉𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒
Link capacity of connected nodes 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 ∈ 𝐸𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 ∀ 𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 ∈ 𝐸𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘
Link associated delay 𝐿𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑦 ∈ ℜ≥0
User instance and data rate [𝑢𝑖 ⊆ 𝑈 ∀ 𝑖 ∈ N] 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝛬𝑢𝑖
VNF Service types 𝑆𝑉 𝑁𝐹 = (𝑃 , 𝑄) 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑝 ∈ 𝑃𝑉 𝑁𝐹 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑞 ∈ 𝑄𝑉 𝑁𝐹
Set of components and arcs (links) 𝑃𝑉 𝑁𝐹 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑄𝑉 𝑁𝐹
Allocated resources for 𝑃𝑉 𝑁𝐹 𝑟𝑝 ∈ ℜ≥0
Traffic over allotted components 𝑝𝑣𝑛𝑓 𝛬𝑝𝑣𝑛𝑓 ∀ 𝑝𝑣𝑛𝑓 ∈ 𝑃𝑉 𝑁𝐹
Traffic load over assigned component 𝑝𝑣𝑛𝑓 𝑟𝑝 (𝛬) ∀ 𝑃𝑉 𝑁𝐹
Service demands on network VNF comp. 𝐷 = 𝑟𝑝 (𝛬) ≥ ℜ≥0
Shared complete graphical components for dynamic network slicing 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑒 = 𝑉𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 ∪ 𝐸𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 ∪ 𝑆𝑉 𝑁𝐹

Fig. 4. General workflow of proposed algorithm for dynamic network slice coordination through VNF sharing.

The 3 levels together provide an end to end network slice orchestration and management solution. The system model parameters
and associated values are shown in Tables 2 and 3 respectively.

3.1. VNF training and embedding over shared slice

The primary objective of VNF training and embedding is to provide the exact network services to the users by associating them
with the substrate network. The proposed algorithms must consider the selection of associative instances for better QoS and should
account for least end-to-end service delay. The generalization of training-assigning problem is developed following the existing
definitions [24].
Deployment of current or additional network services are done over the substrate network . Nodes (𝑉𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 ) are the hardware
entities inside the networks that are logically sliced for creating virtual layers. The node capacities 𝑐𝑣𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 are initiated with positive
real values (ℜ) and are dynamic in nature. We have assumed abstract resource types to avoid complex CPU scheduling (any n

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Fig. 5. The proposed solution architecture for dynamic VNF sharing and localization over URLLC slice.

number of resource types per 𝑣𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 can be assigned using 𝑐𝑣𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 ≥ |ℜ|). Link capacities are assigned corresponding to the maximum
data rate required for a particular service type. Multiple VNF instances over the same physical node (𝑣𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 ) have been considered
to hold high capacity and zero communication delay. Each user entity is assigned to a node with the service-specific slice data rate
𝛬𝑢𝑖 where 𝑖 ∈ N is the total number of users on the slice. A network service 𝑆𝑉 𝑁𝐹 consists with multiple VNFs which have separate
attributes like components (P) and arcs (Q). A VNF can be instantiated multiple times over same slice if the demands are generated
likewise. Thus, the assignment of 𝑟𝑝 (𝛬) is kept dynamic within a feasible range so that under and over allocation of resources can
be avoided easily. Fig. 5 shows the proposed solution architecture for the shared VNFs on drone-assisted slice.

3.2. Importance of definite VNF sharing

There is a strong dependency of service demands and VNF allocations. Most of the literature considered the linear association
of assigned resources to the traffic load. The allocation is random and abrupt in nature. Linear approximation does not result
accurate VNF selection every time. Networks that encounters heavy flow of network traffic cannot fit in such algorithm. Machine
Learning (ML) techniques are extremely useful to predict the required resource demands prior to the allocation. Following which
the assignment of resources can be done more precisely. On the other hand, data dependency cannot be ignored as it affects the
system performance. Section 4 has shown our proposed approach using multiple ML techniques to reduce the error and predicting the
demand association more perfectly so that optimal VNF allocation can be made. However, the fixed linear approximation does affect
the under utilization of the resources when the demands are generated over shared NS. The heterogeneous networking environment
enable the VNFs to work in conjugation. The support of neighbouring resources are often required to manage the user demands.
Hence, the importance of service mapping over specifically identified VNFs on NSs cannot be ignored. The next section explains our
algorithmic way to address this critical factor.

4. Proposed ML-driven algorithmic solution

This section analyzes the algorithmic overview of our proposed algorithm over share slice coordination. A general flow of the
algorithm is shown in the Fig. 4. We have collected the data from the Nginx, Haproxy and Squid datasets that are imported from
SNDZoo [25].

4.1. Service data pre-processing

After importing the data from SNDZoo, it is observed that it contains many redundant data and unnecessary columns. The first
step was to determine which columns were needed. The resource that the SNDZoo database worked with was CPU utilized. The

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Algorithm 1: The algorithm for VNF training and sharing for multi-slice environment
Input:  = (𝑉𝑠𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑒 , 𝐸𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 ) → Network topology Graph
1 𝑁 → Number of service instances,
2 S → Service types for generated demands from the user,
3 P → Set of the total components per Slice of the VNFs,
4 Q → Set of total virtual links per slice of the VNFs,
5 𝛬 → Maximum allowed data-rate of the slice over the inspection window
6 initialization:
7 𝐷𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑡𝑠 → 𝑆𝐷𝑁𝑍𝑜𝑜 Softwarised Network Data Zoo
8 𝑆𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑑𝑉 𝑁𝐹 → 1600 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓 𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, 268 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠
9 𝑁𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑥𝑉 𝑁𝐹 → 1600 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓 𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, 268 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠,
10 𝐻𝐴𝑃 𝑟𝑜𝑥𝑦𝑉 𝑁𝐹 → 1600 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑓 𝑖𝑔𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, 268 𝐸𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑀𝑎𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑒𝑠,
11 𝐸𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 ∶ link capacities = CPU allocated for the network traffic demand are extracted
12 𝑇𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 ∶ Link Throughput → Maximum throughput in KB/sec are extracted
13 𝑖 = 1, 𝑗 = 1
Output: 𝑂𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑢𝑚 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 → selections_of_VNFs
14 Given: 𝑖 ← 1, 𝑗 ← 1
15 while 𝑖 ≤ |𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑓 𝑖𝑔.| do
16 while 𝑗 ≤ |𝐸𝑥𝑝.𝑀𝑎𝑡.| do
17 Backward and forward filling of data
18 add zero points to the data
19 𝑗 ←𝑗+1
20 end
21 Add zero points to the data
22 data scaling from 0 to 1
23 𝑖 ← 𝑖 + 1, 𝑗 ← 1
24 end
25 𝑗←1𝑖←1
26 Split train and test data in ratio of 70:30
27 Employ 5-fold cross validation and grid search to tune hyperparameters
28 Find mean and standard deviation for comparative study of performance of various models.
29 Select the best estimator for both SVR and KRR models
30 Fit the models onto the training data.
31 After training, use models to predict both test data and training data
32 Compute root mean square error in prediction for comparative study
33 Loss optimization of RMSE:
√
∑𝑛 (𝜓̂𝑖 −𝜓𝑖 )2
34 RMSE = 𝑖=1 𝑛
where 𝜓̂𝑖 → predicted value 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜓𝑖 → true target value
35 RMSE values are calculated based on the required CPU allocation per request basis
36 END

network traffic load (in kB/s) was the factor that determined how much CPU should be allocated to that VNF. There was different
data for different amounts of memory required. However, for uniform training, only the data corresponding to only one particular
memory was taken into consideration. We chose data corresponding to memory of 128 MB.

After extracting, the data is still not used because a lot of data points are missing. This is because the VNF data is taken from
real-life experiments so while recording data, some points go missing. There are many ways to handle such cases, we can either
remove those data points from consideration, or we can replace them with the mean or the median of the remaining data points.
However, upon observation of the trend of the datasets, it was seen that it would not have been appropriate. So, instead, we chose
to fill those with identical data from the nearest point where there is no missing data. We do this by first backfilling followed by a
forward filling to take care of missing data on the extremities.

After all of these operations, we added zero points to the data. Since the data does not contain data for zero points, that is, how
much CPU is allocated when there is no traffic, we manually add zero points so that the VNFs do not take up CPU when there is no
traffic. The final process is scaling the data. This is crucial because most machine learning models do not work well with unscaled
data. The data is scaled to the range of 0 to 1. After preparing the data, it is split into training and testing data in a ratio of 70:30.
Now we have the necessary data to work on our machine learning model.

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Fig. 6. Distribution of CPU vs Traffic load for different datasets.

4.2. Training data with appropriate models

Stefan Schneider et al. [25] focused mainly on SVR (Support Vector Regression) along with gradient boosting to determine
resource demands while filling missing data points with medians. However, we found that forward and backward filling works better.
We improve the SVR model by better estimating hyperparameters. Along with SVR, we have employed another machine learning
regression model, KRR (Kernel Ridge Regression) for learning resource demands. KRR uses general ridge regression technique but
with the added benefit of using a kernel. The advantage the KRR provides over SVR is faster training times although it takes longer
prediction times for medium size datasets in comparison to SVR.

4.3. Hyperparameter tuning

To train the SVR and KRR models, appropriate hyperparameters needed to be selected. However, using trial and error to
determine which worked best is tedious and time consuming. So, we employed k-fold cross validation and grid search to select
the best hyperparameter combination automatically based on the range of the possible values that is provided to the estimator. We
used k = 5 for 5 - fold cross validation which returns 5 sets of models with best results. We used root mean squared error as the
metric on which their performance was judged. Out of the 5, we chose the best estimator to train the model.
The training data is used to train the model and after fitting the data, they are used to find out the predicted resources for both
the training and testing part of the dataset. We will discuss the results in the next section.

5. Result evaluation

For training, we have used the 3 datasets namely Nginx, Squid and Haproxy. We used the trained models to predict CPU allocated
based on Traffic load for both the training and test datasets in Figs. 7–9. Fig. 6 shows the distribution of total CPU over the datasets
against the required Traffic Loads.
Schneider et al. [20] did not split their datasets into different training and testing sets, but instead used the entire dataset as
both training and for testing purposes. However, such practices are not advised and can lead to overfitting if not trained properly.
We have made sure to avoid this pitfall and from the plots it can be clearly seen that in both training and test datasets, the
prediction is not too far off from the actual values. Another interesting observation is that the values predicted by KRR are closer
to the actual values than the values predicted by SVR.
Support vector regression (SVR) is based on the concept of a support vector machine (SVM). Unlike most other regression models
which learn by reducing the error between the actual and predicted values, SVR tries to fit the best possible line from the given data
points within an acceptable error limit. In other words, it uses both 𝑙2 regularization loss combined with 𝜖 loss (𝜖 is the error limit).
Moreover, kernel ridge regression uses simple least squared error as its loss function, that is, it learns by reducing the squared
error between actual and predicted values. Before fitting the model, we have found the optimum hyperparameters using k-fold
cross-validation and grid search. We have considered k as 5 which is small because to reduce the time taken for tuning and we also
provide a hyperparameter space because, if it is not provided, it will be extremely difficult to sample random values from a vast
parameter space. Using the 5 fold cross-validation, we obtain the scores (root mean squared error) and their standard deviations to
obtain a visual comparison of the performances of different models during hyperparameter tuning in Fig. 10. The bars represent the
mean of the RMSE values. We see that KRR outperforms SVR slightly and outperforms the SVR used by the previous attempts by
Schneider in [20] by an appreciable margin. We achieve almost 37% better RMSE performance for the Nginx dataset and 33% better
RMSE performance for the Squid dataset. We also showcase the performance of our models during prediction and we calculate the

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Fig. 7. Comparison between actual and predicted values by SVR and KRR.

Fig. 8. Comparison between actual and predicted values by SVR and KRR.

Fig. 9. Comparison between actual and predicted values by SVR and KRR.

root mean squared error as a metric. We see that the maximum RMSE was less than 0.16 which is quite appreciable. The KRR model
uses normal ridge regression but with the added benefit of kernelization. We used the Radial basis function as the non-linear kernel
to better fit the non-linear data.

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Fig. 10. Comparison of root mean squared error for different regression methods and comparison with previous attempts, during cross validation.

Run time analysis

Depending on the size of the dataset, fitting of SVR and KRR can be quite slow as they have a time complexity of O(𝑛3 ), hence
these models are not very fast for fitting data points upwards of 1000 in size. Even then, KRR is usually faster than SVR for medium-
sized datasets because the fitting of kernel ridge regression can be done in closed-form. However, since the data in this scenario
was not huge, both of them performed similarly. The learned KRR model is non-sparse but the SVR model is sparse, which means
that there are not many support vectors. As a result, when it comes to prediction, SVR outperforms KRR. The simulation was tested
on Google Colab with 12.7 GB of RAM.

6. Conclusion and future works

The actualization of resources for the aerial–ground network slicing resource provisioning is still a complex and open problem.
Researchers are comprehensively working on this domain to optimize the QoS parameters as well as increase resource utilization.
As the dedicated allocation of VNFs caused high wastage of resources, exploring the SND/NFV technology the issue can be resolved
using advanced ML algorithms. In this work, we have developed an NS coordination architecture for smooth inter-sharing of
resources on-demand. Our proposed model is efficient enough to reduce the error in the prediction of resources used by VNFs
by an appreciable margin compared to previous attempts at this endeavour, all while bringing down fitting time for the models.
With the help of machine learning techniques, resources have been dynamically allocated to VNFs only according to their needs.
This will prevent over and under allocation of resources, which, in turn, will prevent wastage of unused resources and degraded
service quality respectively. Another added benefit is the reduction of costs as we no longer operators have to provide large enough
fixed resources to prevent degradation of service. The more proficiently and accurately we can predict resources, the better service
we can provide. One potential future improvement of this work can be improving the existing algorithm by leveraging the URLLC
for future 6G communication networks. The advanced VNF placement algorithms like joint-VNF placement, VNF-sharing or the
current VNF-coordination algorithm can be explored to reduce the complexity. Thus, we can then get a better insight into how
much more efficient the network can be over fixed resource allocation and existing methods using machine learning in resource
allocation. In future, we will be looking into reinforcement learning approaches to generate heuristic solutions with less complexity.
This approach will be effective in the area of disaster management or critical sectors for the betterment of humanity.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Deborsi Basu: Conceptualization of this study, Preparing the System Model and algorithmic solution, Idea formation, Writing
– original manuscript preparation. Soumyadeep Kal: Simulation preparation, Result analysis, Data curation. Uttam Ghosh:
Algorithmic solution, Critical inputs, Manuscript review. Raja Datta: Critical inputs, Manuscript review, Technical comments.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

Authors would like to extend their sincere thanks to the members of organizations for providing reliable dataset for successful
completion of the work.

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Deborsi Basu received the B.Tech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata, West Bengal, India in
2016 and M.Tech degree in Communication Engineering from Kalyani Govt. Engineering College, Kalyani, West Bengal, India in 2018. He is currently pursuing
his Ph.D. degree from G. S. Sanyal School of Telecommunications, IIT Kharagpur with the joint collaboration of Meharry School of Applied Computational
Sciences, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

Soumyadeep Kal received his bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology,
Shibpur, West Bengal, India in 2018 and is currently pursuing his master’s degree in Visual Information and Embedded Systems from Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur and is expected to complete by 2022.

Uttam Ghosh is an Associate Professor of Cybersecurity in the Meharry School of Applied Computational Sciences, Nashville, TN, USA. Dr. Ghosh obtained
his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from IIT Kharagpur, India in 2009 and 2013 respectively. His area of research covers multiple domains like Cyber–Physical system
Security, Mobile Ad-hoc Networks, Wireless Sensor Networks, Software-Defined Networking, Cloud Computing, Distributed Algorithms, and Internet of Things
(IoT).

Raja Datta is a Professor in the Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering (E&ECE) at Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He
is presently the Head of Computer and Informatics Centre at IIT Kharagpur. He was the Head of G. S. Sanyal School of Telecommunications of IIT Kharagpur
from April 2018 till June 2021. His main research interests include Computer Communication Networks, Network Function Virtualization, 5G Edge Computing,
Vehicular Networks, Mobile Ad-hoc, Sensor Networks, Optical Elastic Networks, InterPlanetary Networks, Computer Architecture, Distributed Operating Systems
and Distributed Processing.

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