A unified service-based capability exposure framework for closed-loop network automation

The ongoing quest for the tight integration of network operation and the network service provisioning initiated with the introduction of 5G often clashes with the capacity of current network architectures to provide means for such integration. Owing to the traditional design of mobile networks, which barely required a tight interaction, network elements offer capabilities for their continuous optimization just within their domain (eg, access, or core), allowing for a "silo-style" automation that falls short when aiming at closed-loop automation that embraces all the actors involved in the network, from network functions up to the service-provider network functions. To this end, in this article, we make the case for the network-wide capability exposure framework for closed-loop automation by (i) defining the different entities that shall expose capabilities, and (ii) discussing why the state of the art solutions are not enough to support this vision. Our proposed architecture, which relies on registration and discovery, and exposure functions, allows for enhanced use cases that are currently not possible with state of the art solution. We prove the feasibility of our solution by implementing it in a real-world testbed, employing Artificial Intelligence algorithms to close the loop for the management of the radio access network.Part of this work was performed in the context of the H2020 5G-MoNArch project (grant agreement no. 761445). The work of Marco Gramaglia has been partially funded by the H2020 5G-TOURS project (grant agreement no. 856950), and by the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation and the European Union-NextGenerationEU through the UNICO 5G I+D projects 6G-CLARION-NFD, 6G-CLARION-OR, 6G-CLARION-SI, and 6G-CLARION-O

The METIS 5G System Concept: Meeting the 5G Requirements

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.[EN] The development of every new generation of wireless communication systems starts with bold, high-level requirements and predictions of its capabilities. The 5G system will not only have to surpass previous generations with respect to rate and capacity, but also address new usage scenarios with very diverse requirements, including various kinds of machine-type communication. Following this, the METIS project has developed a 5G system concept consisting of three generic 5G services: extreme mobile broadband, massive machine-type communication, and ultra-reliable MTC, supported by four main enablers: a lean system control plane, a dynamic radio access network, localized contents and traffic flows, and a spectrum toolbox. This article describes the most important system-level 5G features, enabled by the concept, necessary to meet the very diverse 5G requirements. System-level evaluation results of the METIS 5G system concept are presented, and we conclude that the 5G requirements can be met with the proposed system concept.This work was supported in part by the European Commission under FP7, grant number ICT-317669 METIS.Tullberg, H.; Popovski, P.; Li, Z.; Uusitalo, MA.; Hoglund, A.; Bulakci, O.; Fallgren, M.... (2016). The METIS 5G System Concept: Meeting the 5G Requirements. IEEE Communications Magazine. 54(12):132-139. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2016.1500799CMS132139541