Optimizing power by selective IP card shutdown using transport slicing
For network operators, this addresses energy efficiency in 6G and AI-driven networks, offering a practical slicing approach with significant energy savings.
This paper proposes a dual-slice IP network slicing strategy for 6G networks that deactivates excess line cards during low traffic, achieving over 40% energy savings while maintaining acceptable latency, with premium traffic latency below 7 ms.
The increasing energy demands of upcoming sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks and networks supporting AI applications pose significant challenges for network operators in terms of operational costs and environmental impact. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a novel IP-based network slicing strategy that optimizes energy efficiency through a dual-slice approach. The proposed solution consists of a Day Slice, designed to meet high-performance requirements during peak traffic hours, and a Night Slice, optimized for energy savings by deactivating excess line-cards in card-based routers during periods of low traffic demand. The traffic is switched between the Day and Night Slices at predefined times, assuming appropriate traffic engineering mechanisms are in place to minimize disruption and support session continuity. We apply Pareto-based evolutionary algorithms (NSGA-II, CTAEA, and AGE-MOEA) to jointly optimize energy consumption and latency. Experiments conducted on the SNDlib india35 topology demonstrate that multi-objective optimization can deactivate over 40% of line cards during low-traffic periods, providing significant energy savings while maintaining acceptable performance. Additionally, a multi-service extension using AGE-MOEA introduces differentiated QoS constraints, maintaining latency below 7 ms for premium traffic while preserving substantial energy savings.