Converged Service-based Architecture for Next-Generation Mobile Communication Networks

Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies have driven mobile communication networks to evolve toward a Service-Based Architecture (SBA) with great flexibility to meet the highly-dynamic requirements of vertical applications. The SBA has been applied into 5th Generation (5G) core network and is evolving toward service-based end-to-end networks including virtualized Radio Access Networks (vRANs). This paper proposes a converged SBA (cSBA) to decouple access, control, and data planes. Specifically, the access plane with Distributed Units (DUs) functionalities is responsible for accessing User Equipments (UEs); the control plane consists of newly-defined converged services by integrating functionalities of Central Unit Control Planes (CU-CPs) and 5G core network for signaling processing; the data plane comprises Central Unit User Planes (CP-UPs) and User Plane Functions (UPFs), which are responsible for service data transmission. Optional converged services definition, service-based interface implementation, and cognitive service framework are proposed to enable an efficient cSBA. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the cSBA against the monolithic architecture.