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Network slicing enabled by fifth generation (5G) systems has the potential to satisfy diversified service requirements from different vertical industries. As a typical vertical industry, smart distribution grid poses new challenges to communication networks. This paper investigates the behavior of network slicing for smart grid applications in 5G radio access networks with heterogeneous traffic. To facilitate network slicing in such a network, we employ different 5G radio access numerologies for two traffic classes which have distinct radio resource and quality of service requirements. Three multi-dimensional Markov models are developed to assess the transient performance of network slicing for resource allocation with and without traffic priority. Through analysis and simulations, we investigate the effects of smart grid protection and control traffic on other types of parallel traffic sessions as well as on radio resource utilization.

5G technology complements the enabling of communication services for different vertical industries such as smart distribution grids. Automation is an integral and necessary part of the power distribution grid operation and management. This paper postulates a framework by which the smart distribution grid can obtain service-oriented communication services using 5G network slicing and intent-based networking (IBN). IBN provides an interface to service users and network stakeholders to cooperate through a high level abstraction model of service provisioning in a network agnostic manner. The automation and adaptability of the distribution grid are facilitated by using the dynamic and closed-loop mechanism of IBN together with network slicing and network function virtualization for network management and orchestration. We identify the automation parts of the power distribution grid and illustrate the intent processing and its inclusion in the definition of network slice instances, service and network configuration models., Comment: This paper has been accepted for presentation at the 28th International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT 21)