Technical, business and
regulatory aspects of 5G network
Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
email: [email protected]
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G Next Generation core network
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Introduction
Every decade, a new set of standards are developed for the core
network:
2.5G added packet data support to Global System for Mobile
Telecommunications (GSM), developed by the European Technical
Standards Institute (ETSI)), the Generic Packet Radio Service
(GPRS), which continued in 3G as Packet-Switched (PS) part.
Further evolution of this system occurred with the introduction of 4G: the
Enhanced Packet System (EPS), whose core network is called the
Enhanced Packet Core (EPC).
5G architecture features a new 5G Core Network (5GC), also called
Next Generation Core Network (NGCN).
It provides full separation of User Plane (UP) and control Plane (CP)
functions, although that process has started in previous generations.
However, UP-CP separation also exists in the 5G Radio Access Network.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Core network evolution
The purpose of the 3GPP system is to efficiently provide terminals, referred
to as User Equipment (UE), with access to services (voice, text, data, etc.)
available in data networks.
UE access to the Data Network involves two other distinct networking
domains: the
Access Network (e.g. Radio Access Network) and
Core Network (GPRS/3G, EPC/4G or 5GC).
Main purpose of the core network is
to serve as a home for main control plane nodes in the mobile network, and
to provide traffic and QoS management of the user plane traffic
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
User plane in mobile core network
The delivery of service in a mobile network generally occurs via a
data forwarding network (consisted of routers, gateways) or in other
words, the user plane.
The Core Network establishes and maintains the packet
forwarding path, which requires the Core Network to support
various capabilities.
The mobile telecommunication system supports data forwarding
even as the UE moves, transits to and from the idle state, and as
services delivered to the UE change over time.
The user plane is not a merely a packet data forwarding path:
it supports many capabilities and constraints, for example monitoring,
service level guarantees, charging and a wide range of network
capabilities that require authorization.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Control plane in mobile core network
The control plane is the term used for all signalling used to
support the functions in the mobile telecommunications system that
establish and maintain the user plane.
Signalling in this sense means exchange of information to enable but
not to provide the end-to-end communication service itself.
In some cases, services are delivered in part by means of control plane
mechanisms,
e.g. SMS messages are delivered to the UE by means of control messages.
The control plane is in fact a forwarding path to exchange
information for operation of the service.
Control plane traffic appears as an “overhead” to the user traffic (it
enables services but is not user traffic by itself),
it must be efficient, scalable, reliable and suited to the needs of mobile
network operators.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Mobile core functions
The Core Network supports several functions, most essentially:
access control,
data packet routing and forwarding,
mobility management,
radio resource management and
UE reachability functions.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Control Plane and User Plane
development in mobile core networks
In GPRS the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) and the Gateway GPRS
Support Node (GGSN) terminate both user plane and control plane
interfaces.
The implementation and implicitly the deployment of these entities tightly couples
the control and user planes.
In EPC, the mobility management (including authentication) functionality of
the SGSN was separated out into control plane represented by Mobility
Management Entity (MME) and user-plane functionality of the SGSN
represented by the Serving Gateway (SGW).
This provided the opportunity to some extent to scale the control aspects in the
MME independently of the session management and data forwarding aspects in
the SGW and Packet Gateway (PGW).
The GGSN functionality evolved into the PGW functionality.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
LTE-Advanced Pro started the separation
of User Plane and Control Plane
In LTE-Advanced Pro (3GPP Release 14), the architecture allowed a full
separation of user plane and control plane, splitting the SGW and PGW into
control and user plane aspects, i.e., SGW-C (Control Plane) and SGW-U
(User Plane), as well as PGW-C (Control Plane) and PGW-U (User Plane).
This allows much more flexible, efficient and higher performance deployments of
the user plane, e.g. to improve the placement, network control and resource
management.
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G Core Network
The 5GC, also separates the control plane and user plane.
The Access and Mobility management Function (AMF) provides
mobility management functions, analogous to mobility management
functions of the MME.
The session management functions of the MME are separated out and
combined with the data plane control functions of the SGW and GPW to
create the Session Management Function (SMF).
Thus the AMF (contrary to MME) does not include session management
aspects.
For example, in the 5G Core network (5GC), session management
aspects of control messages from the UE are terminated by the SMF,
whereas in the EPC these would be terminated by the MME.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G core network architecture
Source: 3GPP.
5G core network. (a) Interface representation, and (b) API level representation
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G core network protocols
Important advantage of this mobility management and session
management separation is that AMF can be adapted for non-
3GPP access networks.
The session management aspects are very access specific and
hence are specified initially for the Next Generation Radio Access
Network (NG-RAN).
Another important development is consolidation of the number of
protocols used between functions in the control plane of the system.
In 5GC the protocol for interaction between all control-plane entities
is HTTP, which is a protocol widely used in the Internet and not
telecom-specific like dedicated Diameter protocol (from IETF) or GTP-C
(GPRS Tunnelling Protocol – Control plane, from 3GPP).
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Service based 5G core architecture
Main advance in the 5GC architecture is the introduction of the Service
Based Architecture.
In GPRS and EPC control plane design, procedures defined all interactions
between network functions as a series of message exchanges, carried out by
protocol interactions.
In the 5GC, network functions employing the Service Based Architecture offer
and consume services of other network functions.
Allowing any other network function to consume services offered by a network function
enables direct interactions between network functions.
For example, the Policy Control Function (PCF) can directly subscribe to
location change service offered by the AMF rather than having to have this event
proxied via the SMF.
In the EPC, by contrast, analogous information followed a hop by hop path from the
MME, to the SGW, to the PGW and finally the Policy and Charging Rules Function
(PCRF).
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G core network slicing
As already noted, slicing is the concept of creating logically
separated networks consisting of network elements dedicated to that
slice.
Slices in 5G core can be created for different purposes.
For example, to serve different traffic types: a slice designed for
enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) traffic is able to handle very
high per user throughput.
Another slice, for massive IoT (mIoT), rather serves large number of
subscribers that transmit small data infrequently but however generate
significant signalling traffic due to idle to active state transitions.
Slices can also be created to serve subscribers belonging to
different enterprises, e.g.
a slice dedicated to subscribers for each Mobile Virtual Network
Operator (MVNO) hosted by the operator.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
The genesis of mobile core network slicing
Though network slicing as a term is new and used specifically for the 5G
networks, variants of this functionality have existed and evolved from GPRS
through EPS towards the 5GS.
Important aspect is that in 3GPP networks UE has two types of connections
with the core-network:
a signaling connection, called Non-access Stratum (NAS), and
one or more data connections – each associated with an IP address for
transferring UE’s IP traffic between the UE and a data network.
such data connection is called a Packet Data Network (PDN) connection for GPRS and
EPS and Packet Data Unit (PDU) session for 5G System.
The NAS connection is between the UE and SGSN in GPRS, between the
UE and MME in EPS and between the UE and AMF in 5GS.
In 5GS the UE also communicates using NAS (Non-Access Stratum) message
with one or more SMFs (one for each PDU session). These messages are
proxied via the single AMF that serves the UE.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Network “slicing” in GPRS/UMTS core
In GPRS networks, the selection of data gateway (GGSN) for UE’s PDN connection is enabled by
the use of Access Point Name (APN).
APN is a string that the UE provides to the network during data connection setup, which identifies
the data network that the UE wants to communicate with.
APNs are used to obtain Domain Name Service (DNS) records of GGSNs’ addresses.
Also, APNs may be part of subscription data or SGSN configuration.
This process allows an operator to restrict the APNs that a subscriber is allowed access.
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Dedicated Core Network (DCN) in
LTE-Advanced Pro
For EPS, 3GPP Rel. 13 added a feature to support Dedicated Core
Networks (DCNs) called ‘Decor’
The selection of the MME was based in part on UE’s subscription, specifically a
“UE Usage Type” parameter in the UE’s subscription.
In 3GPP Rel. 14, an enhancement called enhanced Decor, or eDecor, to
DCNs further added the capability of UE to store the selected DCN ID and
provide that to the RAN and core network during attach.
This simplified the task of selection of Core Network for the UE.
The introduction of Decor and eDecor was a major step forward towards
slicing.
The RAN is provided a DCN-ID but the UE and the RAN directs the UE’s NAS
connection towards the appropriate core network entity (MME).
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Network “slicing” in LTE-Advanced Pro
Example application of DCNs of the two UEs:
The two UEs are assumed to have different “UE Usage Types” and the network
supports separate DCNs for the two UE Usage Type.
For the UE’s NAS connection, the UE 1 is assigned MME from DCN#1 and UE 2
is assigned MME from DNC#2 (not possible in GPRS networks).
In addition the SGWs for the two UEs are different in the two DCNs.
The selection of the SGW and PGW is based on both the DCN-ID and APN of
the PDN connection (similar to GPRS, there is a single DNS to the two DCNs).
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G core network slicing
Most of the limitations are resolved by slicing in the 5G System (5GS).
In the user plane, each data connection of the 5G UE is served by an SMF+UPF
belonging to the same assigned network slice.
A given UE can have data connections to different slices.
There is a single AMF allocated to terminate the UE’s NAS connection, which proxies
session management messages to and from SMFs in the different slices.
Also, UE can have multiple PDU sessions in a slice to different data networks, or
multiple PDU sessions to the same data network via different slices, via the
combination of slice identifier and APN.
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G core network slicing features
All 5G UEs support binding applications to slices and APNs.
5G operators policies for selection of network slices can be centralized in a
network function called the Network Slice Selection Function (NSSF) or
can be configured in each AMF.
The centralization with NSSF may improve the network operability.
Discovery of network functions (e.g., SMF, UPF, PCF) is done by using
Network Repository Function (NRF)
It may be slice-specific or shared across multiple slices.
Slice-specific NRF provides isolation (non-visibility) between slices (e.g., this is
not possible in 4G EPS where the DNS is shared among the DCNs).
The 5G core network has been designed to take advantage of network
orchestration mechanisms to instantiate, maintain and delete slices.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
5G service-based roaming scenario
UE interfaces the Data Network (DN) in the Visited PLMN (VPLMN) and the Home
PLMN (HPLMN) enables it with subscription information (UDM), subscriber
authentication (AUSF) and UE specific policies (PCF).
Visited PLMN (VPLMN) provides Network slice selection (NSSF), network access
control and mobility management (AMF), data service management (SMF) and
application functions (AF).
The user plane (UPF) is managed following a model of control and user plane
separation. Security proxies (SEPP) protect the interactions between PLMNs.
Authentication Server Function
(AUSF)
Access and Mobility Management
Function (AMF)
Data network (DN)
Network Exposure Function (NEF)
NF Repository Function (NRF)
Policy Control Function (PCF)
Session Management Function (SMF)
Unified Data Management (UDM)
User plane Function (UPF)
Application Function (AF)
User Equipment (UE)
(Radio) Access Network ((R)AN)
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
New communication for the 5G core
Making 5G Core Network
functionalities available to 3rd parties
such as service providers and vertical
industries outside the operator’s
domain, is done by the Network
Exposure Function (NEF).
The interface provided by the NEF to
3rd parties.
is based on REST (REpresentational
State Transfer) API (Application
Programming Interface)
This approach is similar to well-
adopted approach in software design of
online services over the public Internet,
such as Web-based services.
The difference is that it is now offered
by the telecom operators to 3rd
parties.
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Service Based Architecture in 5G core
The redesigned core is the architectural and technical realization of the
service-based change design of the 5G system and therefore was named
Service Based Architecture (SBA).
The Network Functions (NFs) forming the SBA communicate with each
other via Service Based Interfaces (SBI).
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Use case of SBA in 5G core network
Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) serves as the single-entry point
for a user equipment (UE) for all its communication.
Once the user decides to use one of the services, e.g. to browse the web, the AMF
needs to assign a Session Management Function (SMF) which manages the users
session context, via service discovery through Network Repository Function (NRF).
Source: 3GPP.
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Uniform Interface Principle in 5G core
Resource identification means that the resource or service needs to have
a unique address, usually an URI (Uniform Resource Identifier).
One should note that in this case it is not a specific server which is addressed
by the URI but the resource itself.
This URI is constructed based on strict rules which are defined in 3GPP
specifications for NRF addresses.
One 5G core URI example:
“https://nrf7.slice-v2x.opx.3gpp/nrf-nfm/v1/nf-instances/smf5-slicev2x” where
Protocol API API NF instance Instance ID
route name type
API
version
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
Conclusions
3GPP standards maintain backwards compatibility from release to
release, even as the network architecture evolves.
Each new core network generation evolves from the previous ones
and at the same time introduces new features.
Control plane signaling architecture in the 5G core network has
advanced by
separating control and user plane, and
introducing the notion of a Service Based Architecture and the
support of network slicing.
The Service Based Architecture (SBA) in 5G is targeted toward
further integration of
Internet technologies (from IETF) and
mobile technologies (from 3GPP).
“Technical, Business and Regulatory Aspects of 5G Network”, Prof. Dr. Toni Janevski
