The development goal of 5G is to achieve continuous wide-area network coverage, hot-spot high-capacity, low-power big-connection, and low-latency high-reliability, and meet the diverse business needs of application scenarios such as eMBB, mMTC, and uRLLC. 5G network will be a full-service, multi-technology convergence network. Through the evolution and innovation of ICT technology, it will meet the rapid development needs of various services containing extensive data and connections in the future, and meet the user-centric network needs. The ZTE 5G Common Core Solution introduces four new architecture design aspects: service based architecture, network slicing, control/forward separation, and stateless design.
* Service based architecture: functions are based on components, services/Microservices are decoupled from each other, and each service/Microservice can be independently upgraded and deployed to achieve rapid business innovation.
* Network slicing: Automated network slicing is made according to the needs of different networks to meet diverse business needs.
* Control/forward separation: Centralized deployment of control planes and distributed deployment of forwarding planes are made to achieve centralized control and nearby forwarding. It is beneficial to avoid user-plane alternative route, shorten the transmission path to meet low latency requirements, and meet the on-demand and flexible deployment requirements of user-plane egress.
* Stateless design: User data is stored independently and applications and data are separated to meet the requirement for a high reliability network. The ZTE 5G Common Core Solution introduces NFV/SDN and Cloud Native technologies, and has the main features of the 3GPP R15 5G Common Core. Based on the 3GPP R15 standard protocol, ZTE is the first in the world to launch a 2G/3G/4G/5G/Fixed full access-based Common Core solution based on the 3GPP R15 service architecture to integrate multiple access ways, support the operators to smoothly evolve to 5G, and deeply integrate the vertical industry to meet the one-stop network construction requirements in various access scenarios, bringing the following benefits to operators:
* Reducing operating costs (OPEX): The solution simplifies the network topology, and achieves unified MANO co-management and NFVI co-management together with the 5G Common Core to further improve the manageability of the 2G/3G/4G network and save network management costs. It supports smooth evolution of network from 4G to 5G, saving network maintenance and upgrade costs.
* Improving user experience: In the interoperability scenario, the interface transmission delay can be effectively reduced and the interoperation switching duration can be shortened. For example, in the EPS-fallback voice fallback scenario, the voice-on delay is shortened.
* Improving system resource utilization and reducing overall CAPEX: Network resources are shared in multiple access modes. Based on unified cloud resource pool, 2G/3G/4G networks can be smoothly evolved to 5G network, and resources released by 2G/3G/4G networks can be for 5G network use. The convergence of user plans can reduce user plane forwarding between separate network elements through unified deployment.
* Applying 5GC features to existing networks: 2G/3G/4G networks can also benefit from 5G advanced features such as Microservice, stateless, control plane/user plane separation, and service orchestration. Helping to achieve compact application scenarios (such as edge computing MEC).
