Mode Selection and Resource Allocation in Sliced Fog Radio Access Networks: A Reinforcement Learning Approach

The mode selection and resource allocation in fog radio access networks (F-RANs) have been advocated as key techniques to improve spectral and energy efficiency. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimization of mode selection and resource allocation in uplink F-RANs, where both of the traditional user equipments (UEs) and fog UEs are served by constructed network slice instances. The concerned optimization is formulated as a mixed-integer programming problem, and both the orthogonal and multiplexed subchannel allocation strategies are proposed to guarantee the slice isolation. Motivated by the development of machine learning, two reinforcement learning based algorithms are developed to solve the original high complexity problem under traditional and fog UEs’ specific performance requirements. The basic idea of the proposals is to generate a good mode selection policy according to the immediate reward fed back by an environment. Simulation results validate the benefits of our proposed algorithms and show that a tradeoff between system power consumption and queue delay can be achieved.