5G-Transformer

Link to project website:  http://5g-transformer.eu/

Social media: Twitter @5g_transformer

Contact: 5G-Transformer-Contact@5g-ppp.eu

Objective

5G-Transformer aims to transform today’s mobile transport network into an SDN/NFV-based Mobile Transport and Computing Platform (MTP), which brings the “Network Slicing” paradigm into mobile transport networks by provisioning and managing MTP slices tailored to the specific needs of vertical industries. The technical approach is twofold:

1. Enable vertical industries to meet their service requirements within customised MTP slices; and
2. Aggregate and federate transport networking and computing fabric, from the edge all the way to the core and cloud, to create and manage MTP slices throughout a federated virtualized infrastructure.

The goal of 5G-Transformer is to design, implement and demonstrate a 5G platform that addresses the aforementioned challenges.

Achievements

5G-TRANSFORMER has designed and developed the 5G-T software platform which is composed of three main building blocks:

• Vertical Slicer (5GT-VS) as the vertical front-end and the common entry point for all verticals. Its functional architecture design is reported in D3.3, the final software implementation of the vertical slicer platform has been released in D3.4 and published as open source on github: https://github.com/5g-transformer/5gt-vs:
  • Offering vertical services through a high-level northbound interface to define vertical services requests and SLAs, providing a catalogue of vertical service blueprints (VSB), based on which the vertical service requests are generated by the vertical and described as vertical service descriptors (VSD).
  • Mapping vertical services to network slices and use of network service descriptors (ETSI NFV NSD) as network slice template.
  • Arbitration among vertical service instances based on their priority and resource budget.
  • Enhanced vertical support to enable the vertical users to define per-instance application-level service configuration in the VSB.
• Service orchestrator (5GT-SO) as the E2E service orchestration platform, offering orchestration of services and resources in Single as well as Multi-domain 5G Virtualized Networks through dynamic function placement and service chaining. Its functional architecture design is reported in D4.3, the final software implementation of the service orchestrator platform has been released in D4.4 and published as open source on github: https://github.com/5g-transformer/5gt-so.
  • End-to-End (E2E) service orchestration along with service life-cycle management across one or multiple administrative domains (federation).
  • Support of decomposing network service into several network service segments that can be deployed locally or across different technology domains or different administrative domains (through service federation).
  • Automated SLA management and service scaling to ensure the service SLAs.
  • Embedding multiple advanced Placement Algorithms to decide the function placement and service chaining to optimize the cost and/or latency, in particular, to accommodate location and latency constraints.
  • Service-aware monitoring platform in charge of producing monitoring data and reports related to the performance or failure events associated to the managed services. The developed monitoring platform is also released in D4.4 and published as open source on github: https://github.com/5g-transformer/5gt-mon 
• Mobile Transport and Computing Platform (5GT-MTP) replaces traditional rigid “one-size-fits-all” deployments with a customizable SDN/NFV-based transport and computing platform capable of simultaneously supporting a diverse range of networking and computing requirements specific to the vertical industries. Its functional architecture design is reported in D2.3, the software implementation of the MTP platform has been released in D2.4 and published as open source on github: https://github.com/5g-transformer/5gt-mtp )
  • Integration of heterogeneous wireless, optical and Ethernet transport solutions in support of joint BH and FH services.
  • Integration of transport network with centralised (DCs) and edge compute (MEC) resources.
  • Providing inter-PoP connectivity including the support for multi-VIM and multi-site
  • Design APIs and abstractions of the infrastructure topology and resources including networking and computing resources.
  • Cross-optimization of radio, transport and computation resources to provide efficient support for network slicing.

The 5G-TRANSFORMER platform was validated and demonstrated in multiple pilots with verticals:  Automotive (CRF), Entertainment (ATOS) and eHealth (SAMUR) in Spain and Italy. Videos of multiple of these demonstrations are available at the 5G-TRANSFORMER YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClQXD0lCxTK9eh_mQzMweww

Project Participants:

LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/5g-transformer-eu-project-a05311144

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/5g_transformer/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClQXD0lCxTK9eh_mQzMweww