Network Slice placement with the problem of allocation of resources from a virtualized substrate network is an optimization problem which can be formulated as a multiobjective Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problem. However, to cope with the complexity of such a continuous task and seeking for optimality and automation, the use of Machine Learning (ML) techniques appear as a promising approach. We introduce a hybrid placement solution based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) and a dedicated optimization heuristic based on the Power of Two Choices principle. The DRL algorithm uses the so-called Asynchronous Advantage Actor Critic (A3C) algorithm for fast learning, and Graph Convolutional Networks (GCN) to automate feature extraction from the physical substrate network. The proposed Heuristically-Assisted DRL (HA-DRL) allows to accelerate the learning process and gain in resource usage when compared against other state-of-the-art approaches as the evaluation results evidence.
@article{arxiv.2105.06741,
title = {A Heuristically Assisted Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach for Network Slice Placement},
author = {Jose Jurandir Alves Esteves and Amina Boubendir and Fabrice Guillemin and Pierre Sens},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.06741},
year = {2021}
}