Abstract

The fifth generation of telecommunication networks comes with various use cases such as Enhanced Mobile Broadband, Ultra-Reliable and Low Latency Communications and Massive Machine Type Communications. These different types of communications have diverse requirements that need to be satisfied while they utilize the same physical infrastructure. By leveraging Software Defined Network (SDN) and Virtual Network Function (VNF) technologies, the 5G network slicing concept can provide end-to-end logical networks on the same physical infrastructure that satisfy the required Quality of Service (QoS) constraints for these communication types. Optimal placement of VNFs on these network slices is still an open problem. Although state-of-the-art research covers the resource allocation of these VNFs, they do not consider optimizing energy consumption under strict security requirements while embedding them into the network. In this paper, we propose a VNF placement strategy using an integer linear programming (ILP) model for 5G network slicing under strict security requirements, which optimizes energy consumption by the core network nodes. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed model achieves significant power savings over a greedy approach performing VNF placement under the same QoS and security constraints.