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5G NETWORK
ARCHITECTURE
The 20th December 2017 will be remembered as an important day
in telecommunications history as, on this day, during a meeting in ANDY
Lisbon, Portugal, 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project)
successfully completed the first implementable 5G NR specification.
SUTTON
NR (New Radio) is the term used to describe the 5G air interface and Scalable and
radio access network. This is the first phase of delivering a optimised 5G
complete 5G end-to-end network based on the architecture
presented in this article. service delivery
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10 ANDY SUTTON
5G NETWORK ARCHITECTURE 11
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increased scale is realised by supporting 64 and user plane functions. Since the early for selecting which core network instance
%
radio transceivers and antennas within the
antenna module in such a way that beam-
days of Global System for Mobile
Communications (GSM) and then General
is to accommodate the service request
from a User Equipment (UE) by taking into
forming" can
"
be implemented
"
to enhance Packet Radio Service (GPRS) we’ve been account the UE’s subscription and any
the coverage by increased directional familiar with logical representations of specific parameters. The user plane
antenna gain. There is widespread global mobile network architectures. These functions start with the UE which may be a
alignment behind the 3.4 to 3.8GHz band diagrams take the form of functional smartphone or a new form factor terminal,
with ongoing discussions about extending blocks and the interfaces between them, possibly fixed rather than mobile. This
this band in the future to 4.2GHz. officially known as reference points. connects via the Radio Access Network
Figure 2 presents this view of the 3GPP 5G (RAN) to the User Plane Function (UPF) and
The higher frequency bands are not as well network, referred to as “reference point on to a Data Network (DN). The DN may be
aligned; Japan, South Korea and the USA representation”. the Internet, a corporate Intranet or an
are favouring the 28GHz band rather than internal services function within the mobile
the 26GHz band which will be supported in The reference points or interfaces, which network operator’s core (including content
Europe. There is a 1 GHz overlap between will be known as interfaces for the distribution networks).
these two bands and it is anticipated that remainder of this paper, start with the letter
both will be fully supported by the 5G eco- ‘N’. Originally these were designated ‘NG’ The NR air interface downlink waveform is
system. for next generation, however recently the Cyclic Prefix-Orthogonal Frequency Division
term has been shortened to simply read ‘N’. Multiplex (CP-OFDM) access while the
While the main focus of 5G spectrum The functional blocks are split between uplink can be either CP-OFDM or Discrete
discussions are currently on new spectrum, control plane and user plane functions with Fourier Transform-spread-Orthogonal
any existing cellular frequency bands can the control plane further split between Frequency Division Multiple access, the
and most likely will be re-farmed to 5G NR subscriber management functions and uplink mechanism being selected by the
in the fullness of time. control plane functions. network based on use case. The UE
connects to the RAN via the air interface
3GPP network architecture The subscriber management functions which also carries the N1 interface which,
The remainder of this paper will focus on consist of the Authentication Server in previous iterations of 3GPP technologies,
the complete 5G end-to-end network Function and Unified Data Management has been known as the non-access
architecture which is the combination of while the control plane function consists of stratum. This is a peer-to-peer control
5G NR and NGC. 3GPP will complete a core Access and Mobility management plane communication between the UE and
standardisation of a 5G network Function, a Session Management Function, core network.
architecture by June 2018 with Release Policy Control Function, Application
15 (phase 2) which supports subscriber Function and Network Slice Selection The N3 interface is what is commonly
data management, control plane functions Function (NSSF). The NSSF is responsible known as mobile backhaul between the
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12 ANDY SUTTON
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figure 3: 5G service-based architecture
RAN and the core network although, as on common computer hardware and call will enable different access types such as
" "
we’ll discuss shortly, this" isn’t as simple in upon resources as required to manage fixed broadband and WiFi (planned for
reality as the illustration in Figure 2 demand at any instance. The use of SBA future releases of 5G).
suggests. The N6 interface provides does not mandate a centralised solution;
connectivity between the UPF and any distributed computing could be • Support a unified authentication function.
internal or external networks or service implemented if appropriate. The SBA is
platforms. This interface will include illustrated in Figure 3. • Support stateless network functions such
connectivity to the public Internet and will that the compute resource is decoupled
therefore contain the necessary Internet- 3GPP states a number of principles and from the storage resource.
facing firewalls and other smarts concepts for SBA (not all are exclusive to
associated with the evolution of the Gi/SGi SBA), including: • Support concurrent access to local and
LAN1 environment. The Gi/SGi LAN centralised services; this will enable
environment has evolved from GPRS • Separate control plane functions from support for low-latency services along
through UMTS and LTE to provide a range user plane functions allowing with access to local data networks. To
of capabilities in support of mobile data independent scalability, evolution and facilitate this, user plane functions can be
network operation, including features such flexible deployment. deployed much closer to the access
as Transmission Control Protocol network.
optimisation, deep packet inspection and • Modularise the functions design to
network address translation. enable flexible and efficient network • Support roaming with both home
slicing. network routed traffic and local break-
In addition to the familiar logical network out traffic in the visited network.
diagram with defined interfaces, 3GPP has • Wherever possible, define procedures
introduced an alternative view of the 5G (the interactions between network The SBA introduces a couple of functions
network architecture which is known as functions) as services therefore their re- that didn’t exist in the traditional logical
Service Based Architecture (SBA). SBA use is possible. interface-based architecture
takes advantage of recent developments in representation; these are the Network
Network Functions Virtualisation and • Enable each network function to interact Repository Function (NRF) and Network
Software Defined Networking to propose a with other network functions directly, if Exposure Function (NEF). The NRF provides
network based on virtualised infrastructure. required. control plane network functions with a
This architecture will leverage service- mechanism to register and discover
based interactions between control plane • Minimise the dependencies between the functionality so that next generation control
functions as necessary. The solution will sit access network and core network; this plane network functions can discover each
1
The Gi-LAN interface is a 3GPP reference point between the mobile packet core and the packet data network or internet. In LTE networks the interface is referred to as the SGi-LAN and connects the Packet
Gateway in the mobile core network to the packet data network.
5G NETWORK ARCHITECTURE 13
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other purposes such as analytics. A figure 5: 5G RAN functional blocks and interfaces (excluding NR air interface)
practical example of use of the NEF is to aid
the establishment of an application server- next Generation Node B (gNB) is split into radio bearer, and QoS flow ID marking.
initiated communication with a UE where two entities: a gNB-Distributed Unit (gNB-
no existing data connection exists.
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DU (often shortened to DU)) and a
gNB-Centralised Unit (gNB-CU (often
Reading Figure 4 from left to right, Radio
Resource Control (RRC) resides in the
functional decomposition of the RAN shortened to CU)). The protocol layer
" " "
control plane while the data is user plane.
In the high-level network architecture interface at which this split will occur has As discussed above, SDAP will be inserted
illustrated in Figures 2 and 3, the RAN is been the topic of much debate in 3GPP and between data and the Packet Data
represented as a single functional entity throughout the wider industry. Convergence Protocol (PDCP) for a
whereas in reality the realisation of a 5G standards-compliant 5G NR view of the
RAN is not so straightforward. In GSM/GPRS 3GPP used the RAN protocol model protocol stack. Functions of PDCP include;
and UMTS there was a network controller illustrated in Figure 4 (3GPP TR 38.801) to IP header compression and decompression
which provided an interface between the discuss the functional split which should be along with ciphering and deciphering
radio access network and the core network. implemented in 5G. Note that this protocol (encryption of the data over the radio
This network controller hid a lot of model is based on LTE as this was all that interface). PDCP feeds down the stack to
signalling from the core, particularly in was known at the time although this the Radio Link Control (RLC) layer. RLC
UMTS, and managed a range of complex doesn’t differ significantly from 5G NR. The functions include; Error correction with
RAN functions. In LTE there is no network same terms are used although there have Automatic Repeat request (ARQ),
controller, the RAN manages a range of been some minor movements of functional concatenation and segmentation, in
mobility management and radio sub-entities. Additionally, a new protocol, sequence delivery and protocol error
optimisation activities between evolved known as Service Data Adaptation Protocol handing. Moving down the stack from RLC
Node Bs via the X2 interface. 5G effectively (SDAP), has been introduced to the NR user to the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer
introduces a centralised RAN node albeit plane to handle flow-based Quality of we find the following functions;
not a network controller as such. The 5G Service (QoS) framework in RAN, such as multiplexing and de-multiplexing,
radio base station, known as a mapping between QoS flow and a data measurement reports to RRC layer, Hybrid
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5G NETWORK ARCHITECTURE 15
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