Intelligent Radio Resource Slicing for 6G In-Body Subnetworks

Abstract

6G In-body Subnetworks (IBSs) represent a key enabler for supporting standalone eXtended Reality (XR) applications. IBSs are expected to operate as an underlay to existing cellular networks, giving rise to coexistence challenges when sharing radio resources with other cellular users, such as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) users. Such resource allocation problem is highly dynamic and inherently non-convex due to heterogeneous service demands and fluctuating channel conditions. In this paper, we propose an intelligent radio resource slicing strategy based on the Soft Actor-Critic (SAC) deep reinforcement learning algorithm. The proposed SAC-based slicing method addresses the coexistence challenge between IBSs and eMBB users by optimizing a refined reward function that explicitly incorporates XR cross-modal delay alignment to ensure immersive experience while preserving eMBB service guarantees. Extensive system-level simulations are performed under realistic network conditions and the results demonstrate that the proposed method can enhance user experience by 12-85% under different network densities compared to baseline methods while maintaining the target data rate for eMBB users.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Network model showing a number of IBSs (XR users) coexist and share the radio resources with eMBB users.
• Figure 2: The DRL-based RAN slicing showing inter-slice and intra-slice schedulers.
• Figure 3: Satisfaction ratio under varying number of IBS users.
• Figure 4: CDF of the synchronization latency of the XR users with $N=20$ and $N=25$.
• Figure 5: Average throughput of eMBB users under varying number of IBS users.