Developing a next generation mobile core network architecture
The core network elements within a mobile network play a key role in the mobile architecture as a means to allow access to the subscriber's services of a mobile operator. Through the years, the deployment of mobile core networks has evolved from bare metal, isolated solutions towards the cloud...
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| Formato: | tesis de maestría |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) |
| Repositorio: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC |
| Idioma: | catalán |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/386711 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://hdl.handle.net/2117/386711 |
| Access Level: | acceso embargado |
| Palavra-chave: | Cloud computing Computer networks 3PP Mobile Core network Cloud Computació en núvol Ordinadors, Xarxes d' Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació::Telemàtica i xarxes d'ordinadors |
| Resumo: | The core network elements within a mobile network play a key role in the mobile architecture as a means to allow access to the subscriber's services of a mobile operator. Through the years, the deployment of mobile core networks has evolved from bare metal, isolated solutions towards the cloud environment, but still it requires big investments for Mobile Network Operators and stakeholders. In recent years, the evolution of mobile networks, with the help of technologies like virtualization and cloudification, has led to the appearance of open-source solutions which help to make flexible and dynamic mobile networks for future 5G requirements. From them, new opportunities arise, since lower-cost solutions allow smaller companies to reach the minimum investment gap to deploy mobile network infrastructure. The emergence of open-source core networks solutions like Magma, Open5GS, OMEC, etc., also allows exploring new research on topics that, previously, were difficult to evaluate, and, at the same time, accessible only to a few incumbent stakeholders. The evolution from traditional bare-metal solutions to cloud-based ones plays an important role on the road towards deploying more automatized mobile networks by allowing the industry to develop more flexible and dynamic networks to drive and support the necessities of coming types of technologies like \acrshort{eMBB}, \acrshort{mMTC}, and \acrshort{URLLC}. This TFM explores the design and deployment challenges of Magma, an open-source evolved packet core (EPC) network, in a cloud environment. The designed core cloud architecture is aimed to support partner operators' integration, based on a home-routed roaming architecture. The differences between the 3GPP core architecture and the Magma core solution are analyzed, including traffic load distribution, signaling and user plane handling. A solution for a core deployment migration from a bare-metal solution to the AWS cloud domain is elaborated. The issue of user plane tunnel link between an AWS cloud environment connected to remote sites is approached, including a proposed solution. Based on the previous points, two designs on the AWS domain are proposed. The first design is suggested for a test-bed cloud core environment. The second one is suitable for a production environment. Finally, conclusions and the envisioned future works are described. |
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