Motivation:

The explosive growth of mobile internet traffic attributed to the rapidly increasing number of smart devices forces network providers to concurrently support a large variety of services that can be either stand alone or interact. This introduces the need to transform traditional closed, static and inelastic network infrastructures into open, scalable and elastic ecosystems that can support a large variety of dynamically varying applications and services. This transformation aims to bring new service capabilities to network operators in terms of: i) connectivity for a growing number of very diverse devices, ii) high mobility in heterogeneous environments and, iii) mission critical services currently handled by specific purpose networks, supporting highly variable performance attributes in a cost and energy-efficient manner.

These demanding and diverse requirements cannot be supported by current best effort internet connections or a smooth migration from existing network architectures and technology deployments to next generation solutions. Instead, it requires a paradigm shift to support the upcoming service requests following new service models such as cloud-based solutions, imposing enormous capacity requirements that exceed 1000 times current bandwidth needs, available to 10s of billions of end-devices. In this context, a future proof infrastructure needs to address a wide range of vertical industry services adopting a flexible architecture offering converged services across heterogeneous technology domains deploying unified software control.

To this end, 5G-PICTURE provides a platform that transforms current closed, purposely developed and dedicated infrastructures into open environments where resources can be accessed and shared on demand supporting very diverse services that can vary dynamically in time. The level of service variability will go beyond just variability in the volume of demands and will cover also other characteristics relating to mobility, density etc. This will make the 5G-PICTURE infrastructure suitable to support in essence any service associated with mobile telecommunications networks as well as any other vertical industry through a common infrastructure.

Objectives:

5G- PICTURE follows the generic 5G design principles defined by the 5G-PPP community and designs and implements a 5G platform offering:

• Support of 5G ICT and vertical operational and end-user services.

• Integration of heterogeneous network technologies (wireless and optical).

• Integration of communication and computation technologies.

• Softwarisation of network and vertical-specific components enabling a paradigm shift from network entities to network functions.

• Slicing for multi-tenancy and efficient resource sharing.

Work Packages

The Computer Network Research Group of Paderborn University is mainly involved in the following work packages:

Work package 2: 5G and Verticals Services, Requirements and Architecture

This work package identifies the 5G ICT and “Vertical” services (i.e. relevant to other industries outside the telecom ecosystem such as Rail, media etc. supported by 5G solutions) and their related requirements to be considered in the project. It is also responsible for the analysis and benchmarking of the proposed architecture, by investigating its performance in terms of a set of KPIs) as well as its scalability and sustainability potential.

Work package 5: 5G Operating System

To manage and operate complex heterogeneous infrastructures, WP5 integrates SDN and NFV and optionally existing slicing systems by using an instrumented execution container. This WP uses infrastructure resources flexibly, dynamically and efficiently, simplify infrastructure management and deployment of chained services.

Work package 6: Demonstration of 5G ICT and Vertical Use Cases

The aim of this Work Package is to validate the feasibility of the functionalities and the architectural solutions developed in the project and demonstrate them in two vertical scenarios namely the provision of end-user and operational services at smart railway and crowded stadium use cases.

Work package 7: Standardisation, Dissemination and Exploitation

This work package deals with dissemination/communication, standardisation and commercial exploitation related activities.