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5G-IANA objectives relative to SMEs

1 Provide an Automotive Open Experimental Platform (AOEP) at the disposal of “third parties”.​

2 Implement an open repository environment for nApps and VNFs to ease the design and chaining of new automotive-related services of SMEs.​

3 Implement and trial Connected and Automated Driving relevant Use Cases to validate and assess the AOEP suitability.​

4 Create new business opportunities and boost market for start-ups and SMEs with Automotive nApps.​

Platform capabilities

The main capabilities and features of the AOEP platform at the disposal of the experimenters at this stage are the following:

  • The AOEP is an enhanced Automotive-related experimentation infrastructure (including the vehicles) where an AFs/NFs Repository exists, along with the hosting of a number of nApp Starter Kits, i.e., simple examples of different nApps that third parties (i.e., SMEs) can use as a baseline to develop their own nApps or that can be included in Vertical Service chain to consume exposed services.
  • It offers functionalities for designing, validating, and benchmarking/experimenting Vertical Services and their components (i.e., nApps and NFs/AFs) and thus, provides functionalities for easing the design and chaining of new Automotive-related services.
  • It offers the ability to deploy and orchestrate Vertical Services from the application point of view, and to monitor them at run-time.
  • It allows the deployment of services at the edge of the network (on OBUs and RSUs), and by doing so reduces the end-to-end application latency of services, as well as supporting privacy for sensitive application data. Especially, it allows to implement/integrate a “lightweight” orchestration on top of OBUs/RSUs for offering a more flexible and scalable management of Vertical Services and constituent nApps and AFs/NFs.
  • It provides the appropriate end user graphical interface, allowing: a) the onboarding of the application components (in form of microservices), b) the editing of the functional application component parameters (e.g., required CPU, Memory, location of image, dependencies on other components etc.), c) the selection or definition of monitoring metrics from the application components, d) the linking of application components to form service nApps combining application-related components (i.e., AFs) and networking related components (i.e., NFs), e) the editing of functional operating parameters (e.g., location, targeted latency and bandwidth limits, linking to access UIs, etc). Overall, it provides a user-friendly and openly accessible environment to experimenters for the experimentation, validation and testing of their applications with ease.
  • According to these objectives, the AOEP is designed as a multi-layered platform that extends from the end user (application) layer to the infrastructure layer and optimally combines context and network infrastructure-aware functionalities for the deployment of advanced services represented as linked chains of virtualised functions (application, network, and communication functions).

Testbed facilities

5G-IANA will utilize 2 different 5G SA test networks. One in the City of Ulm (Germany) operated by NOKIA and one in Ljubljana (Slovenia) operated by TeleKom Slovenia (TS).

NOKIA testbed

Nokia operates an LTE/5G test network in Ulm, Germany. Four antenna sites are connected with optical cables to the 5G base station (gNB) located in the Nokia laboratory. The 5G core’s UPFs, which are responsible for routing and forwarding user data between the gNBs 
and the external Data Networks (DN), are also located in the Nokia laboratory. So is the EDGE Server, on which Data Networks (DNs) for
5G-IANA are hosted.

The EDGE Server provides computing resources at the “edge” of the mobile network and close to the mobile user. Due to the co-location of gNB, UPF(s), and EDGE Server, and the use of optical fibre between gNB and the antenna sites, the latency of user data traffic between an antenna site and the EDGE Server is below 1ms.

Network Slicing is used to allocate network resources to fulfil the requirements of specific services. Nokia will provide two preconfigured network slices – one for Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and one for Vehicular to Everything (V2X).

The area at antenna site “DRK Ulm” will be used for the 5G-IANA use case testing. Figure 2 indicates the two currently available sector cells of this site, and the enclosed parking area near this antenna site, which can be booked on weekends for use case testing. Each cell sector operates in the frequency range from 2575-2615MHz (band b38 resp. band b41/TDD) with an UL/DL radio resource split of 30/70. Figure 2 also indicates maximum uplink and downlink cell throughput rates available at the parking spot.

Figure 1: Simplified Network Topology of the Nokia Testbed

Figure 2: Sector cells at antenna site DRK and the cell capacities at the parking lot for UC testing. (map picture source: OpenStreetMap)

Telekom Slovenije testbed

In 5G-IANA project, Telekom Slovenije provides a second testbed, which is located at Telekom premises in Ljubljana. The 5G infrastructure consists of:

  • Cloud and virtualization environment
  • Centralized Edge
  • Network connectivity
  • 2 dedicated indoor 5G NR micro cells
  • 5G ready core network based on EPC extensions.
  • 5G SA Core
  • 4G – LTE radio access network (CA, Nb-IoT, VoLTE

The cloud and virtualization infrastructure is the main compute, storage and network power of the facility. It serves as a container for deployment of virtual network functions (VNFs). The mobile core is deployed on top of the cloud virtualization platform, with all virtual packet core functions. The radio access network (RAN) is connected to the mobile core network, residing in the cloud / virtualization
environment.

Figure 3: Components of 5G-IANA testbed at Telekom Slovenije

Specific measurement/monitoring tools within the testbed will be available for verifying and validating the experimenters’ nApps to certain extent. For the TS testbed, the solution qMON (made available by 5G-IANA partner ININ) will be available:

qMON is a 5G-assured monitoring and testing solution for unified mobile, cloud and fixed systems operations. It enables end-to-end automated measurements in live environments as well as it can provide emulation of active end-to-end users and various services. Designed on the principle of distributed autonomous agents, it provides zero data loss while supported by centralised cloud-based management. Focused on QoS and QoE monitoring, qMON provides hundreds of Key Performance indicators for multiple purposes including coverage and performance assessment, live network and service troubleshooting, network and services trending and device and system performance predictions under realistic load conditions. Finally, qMON’s analytics services provide measured KPIs enrichment (e.g., GIS data, operator provisioned data), live analytics and multiple operator BI integration options.
qMON is composed of the following system components:
– qMON Manager: centralized cloud-based system management,
– qMON Collector: Centralized KPI collector deployed on site or in the cloud,
– qMON NetworkSensor: Network agents for active user and services emulation,
– qMON Insight: Real-time monitoring and advanced cloud-based analytics.