The project aims to provide an integrated feature that complements and is based in ongoing 5G standardisation efforts. The research team possesses ample experience in the utilisation of SDN [Mene15a][Mene15b] and NFV [Mene15c] aspects, particularly from their integration in optimized mobility scenarios [Mene17]. Nonetheless, the time hiatus from today until the project start will undoubtly see enormous evolutions in regards to such approaches as well as standardisation. As such, it is critical that the project addresses the evolution onset at that time, focusing on the global review of 5G reference architecture results and standardization work in 3GPP SA2 available at the time, and existing similar activities around 5G control plane. Moreover, the task will also address here two other important cornerstones, namely the requirement analysis from the use case of health data, conveying them (along with the result from the state of the art study), into the 5GCONTACT baseline architecture. Regarding the first, the task will study in substantial detail the distinct aspects provided by the health data use case. Information will be gathered from existing projects, publicaly available industrial scenarios and application spaces, as well as 5G Pan-European Trials Roadmaps from the 5G Infrastructure Association. To this end, the use case will be formally specified using a template which will cover the various aspects and dimensions, such as functional flexibility, deployment, as well as the classification, rating and evaluation considering the data, stakeholders and the necessary networking infrastructure to support it. With this study, along with the state of the art analysis, the task will finalize with the provision of a baseline architecthure for 5GCONTACT focusing on the integration aspects of network slicing, convergence and context, considering existing components and functions defined in standardisation effort. The project will address, in this architecture design, not only the changes needed to support this integrated behavior, but will also place particular attention to the interfacing needs to the existing and other relevant architectureal blocks from other sources, such as ETSI MANO and NFV. The last 3 months will overlap with Activities 2, 3 and 4, allowing a bidirectional feed between them, ensuring that the developed architecture reflects the specificities of the three main components in the framework. The task will involve all members of the research team. The IR will be coordinating this task, which will have the support of the co-IR, where his chairmanship of the NetWorld2020 and Board position at the 5GPPP Infrastructure Association will provide important feedback. The hired researcher will have a prominent place in the integration of the collected information, which will consist of important technical assest researched by two grant holders.
Starting from an in depth review of relevant results and achievements around the 5G Ecosystem within the 5G R&D community and associated standardisation tracks, as well as from the analysis of functional requirements from the challenging health data use case (both performed in the previous activity and allowing 3 months overlap for a bidirectional feedback adjustment between specific findings within each task), this activity will study and elaborate on novel control plane and data plane enabling technologies, functions and protocols to address the realization of network slicing as a service, exploring the necessary network control and coordination capabilities between a virtualisation-enabled infrastructure and the plethora of different requirements coming from the support of different users and verticals. The concept of slicing will be leveraged to provide the capability of defining, instantiating and managing communication systems with tailored architectures, as well as the resource isolation that might be needed to allow in turn to efficiently and optimally address the specific requirements of the health data scenario. The task will address a 3-layered approach for the provisioning of network slicing, enabling slice control at the Service Instance Layer, the Network Instance Layer and the Resource Layer.
- The first will deal with the representation of the services that need connectivity solutions.
- The second will be the representation of the characteristics of the network which are required by an instance of a Service.
- The resource layer will be the mapping with the networking mechanisms that provide the connectivity for the data.
5GCONTACT will distinguish itself by using NFV mechanisms to allow the utilisation of virtualised network resources as a way to abstract resources belonging to different types of access networks, and thus enable the support of an heterogeneous approach to the addressed health data scenario. The task will consider the operational features of network slicing being addressed by NGMN, and 3GPP, exploiting their realization through the usage of virtualization (NFV), softwarization (SDN) and cloud-based deployments. The task will also address associated issues related to the network slice mechanism, namely the support of scalable, secure and privacy means within slices, as well as their management. Different from today’s models of shared infrastructure, which are based on service level agreements and business interfaces, slicing will enable a strong automation to this process of sharing. As such, new slice-enabled control mechanisms will need to be considered in this design. The complexity of this task is addressed with the direct involvement of the hired researcher, who will have some effort on activities 3 and 4, in order to ensure smooth integration between the three mechanisms in activity 4. The IR and co-IR will also provide coordination support, as well as thematic position in international research efforts.
Context awareness for optimizing control plane and data plane has gained a lot of interest in the recent years with the 3GPP SA2 WG listing the key issues for next generation mobile networks and highlighting context awareness as one of the decisive features to be supported. However, there are a number of challenges related to its effective adoption:
- The context used today in 4G networks, such as Packet Data Network subscription context, Mobility Management context and Evolved Packet System bearer context are not rich enough to allow for efficient optimisation. E.g., the PDN context includes the identity of a PDN gateway and Access Point Name, indicating which gateway and APN are used, while no information regarding the PDN subscription usage and status is provided;
- Today, context is handled in a non-consolidated way, which means different network functions process and handle context data locally, and as a consequence, reusability is extremely complex;
- With the need for 5G to be costumisable according to the requirements and varying conditions in which vertical services might operate, it demands context ontology mechanisms allowing 5G to operate independently of the environment specificities.
To this end, 5GCONTACT aims to research a context framework able to generate rich context, taking into account diverse information, that goes beyond the physical layer but actually provides input regarding their instantiation over the virtualisation layer as well. As such, this activity will investigate the interaction with end users, heterogeneous access technologies (consolidating the work being done in activity 3), network functions and external applications with regards to obtain contextual information. Then, for a selected set of data plane and control plane scenarios focusing on health data, it will evaluate the gain from context aware operation. With this insight, it will then design a supportive context-based mechanism, focusing on methods and solutions for an efficient context provisioning across all architectural blocks of the 5GCONTACT framework. This framework will focus on the mapping with specific context-generating sources and categorize them using a generic technology-independent identification and classification system. Then, it will focus on the integration of a publish-subscribe mechanism able to convey that information into decision entities in the network, allowing for the realisation of optimisation procedures. This solution will be analysed regarding possible context-aware optimization mechanisms, such as centralized versus distributed state replication aiming at maximizing availability while minimizing costs. This task will be under coordination of the IR and Co-IR, and will see its greatest effort addressed by the second research grant holder, with support from the hired researcher. The task will be executed in parallel with activities 2 and 3, and will slightly overlap with activities 1 and 5.
This task comprises the integration effort from the modules outputted by activities 2, 3 and 4. Initially, an integration strategy will be established (a milestone on the second month of this task) in order to guide the development integration, and achieve the full integration rapidly. At the end of the task (milestone on the seventh month of the task), we expect to have a complete framework solution system, able to be evaluated under different validation schemes in activity 6. 5GCONTACT places a high emphasis on the generation of open-source software and will create a git-hub open-source code repository to share with the remainder scientific community. Finally, the task will also address any necessary design changes and development to have the framework operate in an integrated way. The IR and Co-IR will jointly coordinate this effort with support from the hired researcher, which will oversee integration technical activities in a joint effort with both grant holders.
This tasks evaluates key concepts related with the health data use case, in a mobile convergent scenario. A suitable evaluation methodology will be chosen, with focus on experimental prototyping. The task expects to provide figures associated with feasibility, implementation complexity, as well as concepts validation. Of particular interest is the proper operation and interworking of the modularised architecture, gain of smartness and flexibility in the provisioning of connectivity pertaining to costs (e.g., associated with transport, latency and resources), performance, as well as potential and efficiency in supporting the health data scenario (other scenarios can be explored as well). The task will implement, as necessary, relevant supportive software components to assist the framework tests. 5GCONTACT will leverage the existing cloud-based PROXMOX/OpenStack datacenter with integrated SDN controllers and devices, coupled with the AMAZING platform, which is a 24-node dual-access technology programmable testbed located on the roof of IT Aveiro. In addition, this taks will leverage the participation of IT Aveiro in the 5GinFIRE H2020 research project (see the project description in participated projects section by the IR and Co-IR of 5GCONTACT), where the enhancements of 5G network slicing, convergence and context produced by 5GCONTACT can be experimented and exploited at scale. Also, 5GCONTACT will explore the participation of IT Aveiro in the SMARTENTERCOM project, where multi-technology access network gateways are coupled with SDN mechanisms in critical communication scenarios, allowing for a broader analysis of the impact and technical considerations (as well as contributions) of the solutions developed within 5GCONTACT. This task will count with the participation of all members from the research team, with the IR coordinating the efforts with support from the Co-IR and the hired researcher, which will also participate, along with the grant holders in the development and validation efforts. This activity will also be focused towards the exploitation of the performance outcomes. Despite the project being finalised in month 24, it is expected that further outcomes related to 5GCONTACT are disseminated further, through their integration and/or adoption (as potential use cases or as a result of 5GCONTACT open-source generated software) in other projects such as 5GinFIRE and SMARTENTERCOM. Moreover, the interest by the stakeholders (Altice Labs and Altran) has also manifested on the realisation of experiments via interfacing with other modules in their own labs, beyond the feasibility guidelines provided.