Formulating network revenue optimization for provisioning tactile internet traffic

Abstract Tactile traffic, crucial for applications like remote surgery, imposes strict requirements on delay, jitter, and packet loss. For ensuring guaranteed transport of tactile sessions, the provision of a dedicated tactile traffic class in the access network is necessary. Unlike high‐priority traffic classes that can tolerate occasional service lapses, tactile traffic cannot compromise on quality. To support tactile traffic in realistic‐sized internet protocol (IP) access networks, the simultaneous provisioning of tactile traffic between all source‐destination pairs is addressed. Tactile traffic sessions that we consider have a modest data rate requirement and sessions size. Therefore, network operators need to find the right balance between tactile and best‐effort traffic to increase revenue. This optimization problem is formulated as a network layer multi‐criterion design problem, aiming to maximize net revenue from tactile traffic while optimizing a similar measure for best‐effort traffic. Linear optimization models prove useful in accommodating and facilitating tactile internet traffic in an IP network, allowing determination of the proportion of tactile and best‐effort traffic that leads to maximum network revenue.