5G Network Slicing Technology and Its Impact on COVID-19: A Comprehensive Survey

Hussein, B. A.; Al-Turjman, F.

At the end of 2019, no one could have imagined how the world will dramatically change. A new outbreak has emerged causing millions of people to go into lockdown for their own safety. World Health Organization (WHO) has later announced this outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) as pandemic. This has caused huge stress to medical staff. The need for digital connectivity between communities and nations had arisen. Digital revolutionary services like telehealth, telemedicine, eVisit, etc. play a vital role in reducing the risk and fighting the spread of the pandemic. The industry and academia accept 5G as the potential network capable of serving vertical applications of next generation with specific service needs. In order to achieve this dream, the physical network must be separated into several separate functional blocks of various sizes and systems devoted to specific kind of services depending on their needs (a full slice for large eHealth apps, healthcare servers, IoT apps, smart cities and so on). Network slicing (NS) was described as the foundation of fast-growing 5G. Although, as its standardization advances and consolidation, few literatures which address main concepts, research challenges and service enablers, in a detailed way are available. In this paper these aspects should be provided and discussed. This study covers industry trends and requirements for 5G including both business drivers and performance requirements. Network slicing Key enabling technologies, architectures and implementations, standardization and future challenges will be discussed and briefly viewed. © 2021, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.