New 5G Network Slicing Model Promises Safer Remote Driving and Smarter Use of Telecom Infrastructure

05/11/2025

Researchers from the Information Processing and Telecommunications Center (IPTC) group have developed a new slicing model for 5G transport networks that can guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) even when traffic burst occur, a known weakness of current telecom standards. Their proposal, called Hierarchically Controlled Transport Network Slicing (HCTNS), introduces a fine-grained resource control mechanism that allows different services to share the same physical network while still receiving the performance they require.

Unlike existing IETF-based solutions, which struggle to handle bandwidth bursts and often sacrifice latency or reliability, HCTNS adds a third control level and a burst-management feature that prevents congestion without wasting unused capacity. The model has been validated on a real experimental platform and shown to outperform both the current IETF reference design and other academic proposals.

Photo from one of the Remote Driver project meetings at CTAG’s facilities.

This research was conducted as part of the Remote Driver project, where the use case explored is Teleoperated Driving (ToD), a scenario in wich a human operator remotely drives a vehicle. This application demands ultra-low latency for control commands, high reliability for telemetry, and high bandwidth for real-time video — all at the same time. The researchers show that their model can isolate and prioritize these flows while still allowing other services, such as enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) or URLLC, to coexist efficiently.

Beyond remote driving, the work opens the door to applications such as industrial robotics, emergency response networks, remote surgery, smart grids, and future 6G-ready services — all of which need guaranteed performance over shared infrastructures.

The results indicate that HCTNS could help telecom operators offer premium network slices without over-provisioning, making next-generation networks both more efficient and more economically viable.

Bibliographic Reference:

Encinas-Alonso, A., Lentisco, C.M., Soto, I., Bellido, L.& Fernández, D. A Slicing Model for Transport Networks with Traffic Burst Control and QoS Compliance for Traffic Flows in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, vol. 6, pp. 2152-2176, 2025, doi: 10.1109/OJCOMS.2025.3552839.

Aitor Encinas Alonso: ORCID / LinkedIn

Carlos M. Letisco Sánchez: GS / ORCID / LinkedIn

Ignacio Soto Campos: GS / ORCID / LinkedIn

Luis Bellido Triana: ORCID / LinkedIn

David Fernández Cambronero: ORCID / LinkedIn

Original source: UPM / Sala de Prensa / Noticias de investigación

Caption for the cover photo: One of the Remote Driver project meetings at CTAG’s facilities.

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