Achieving End-to-End Reliability of Mission-Critical Traffic in Softwarized 5G Networks

Vitaly Petrov, Maria A. Lema, Margarita Gapeyenko, Konstantinos Antonakoglou, Dmitri Moltchanov, Fragkiskos Sardis, Andrey Samuylov, Sergey Andreev, Yevgeni Koucheryavy, Mischa Dohler

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

101 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Network softwarization is a major paradigm shift, which enables programmable and flexible system operation in challenging use cases. In the fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks, the more advanced scenarios envision transfer of high-rate mission-critical traffic. Achieving end-to-end reliability of these stringent sessions requires support from multiple radio access technologies and calls for dynamic orchestration of resources across both radio access and core network segments. Emerging 5G systems can already offer network slicing, multi-connectivity, and end-to-end quality provisioning mechanisms for critical data transfers within a single software-controlled network. While these individual enablers are already in active development, a holistic perspective on how to construct a unified, service-ready system as well as understand the implications of critical traffic on serving other user sessions is not yet available. Against this background, the paper first introduces a softwarized 5G architecture for end-to-end reliability of mission-critical traffic. Then, a mathematical framework is contributed to model the process of critical session transfers in a softwarized 5G access network and the corresponding impact on other user sessions is quantified. Finally, a prototype hardware implementation is completed to investigate the practical effects of supporting mission-critical data in a softwarized 5G core network as well as substantiate the key system design choices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)485-501
JournalIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
VolumePP
Issue number99
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Mar 2018

Keywords

  • 5G network function virtualization
  • fifth-generation mobile systems
  • heterogeneous networks
  • millimeter-wave communications
  • mission-critical traffic
  • Software-defined networking

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