NETCOM Research Group

The expected diversity of services and use cases in 5G requires a flexible, adaptable, and programmable architecture. While the design of such an architecture has been addressed by 5G-PPP Phase 1 projects at a conceptual level (for example, 5G-NORMA and METIS II), it must be brought into practice in Phase 2. To this end, 5G-MoNArch will evolve 5G-PPP Phase 1 concepts to a fully-fledged architecture, develop prototype implementations and apply these prototypes to representative use cases.

5G MoNArch’s specific technical goal is to use network slicing, which capitalizes on the capabilities of software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), orchestration of access network and core network functions, and analytics, to support a variety of use cases in vertical industries such as automotive, healthcare, and media. Network slicing is a technique where the network is logically (not physically) sectorized, so that separate services are supported by each “separate” logical network. As 5G networks need to support simultaneously various services with different requirements, network slicing will be a crucial aspect of the network architecture, providing flexible and adaptive networks which fulfill the 5G requirements.