5G-enabled Growth in Vertical Industries
We designed, developed, integrated, and evaluated an ETSI NFV-compliant smart management and orchestration (MANO) stack that (i) embeds AIML for automated service management, (ii) enables end-to-end cross-domain network slicing, (iii) supports hybrid services combining physical, virtual, and cloud-native functions, and (iv) fulfills the stringent needs of 5G/6G vertical services.
The main objective of 5GROWTH is the technical and business validation of 5G technologies from the verticals’ points of view, following a field-trial-based approach on vertical sites (TRL 6-7). Multiple use cases of vertical industries (Comau S.P.A., EFACEC Engenharia e Sistemas S.A., EFACEC Energia – Maquinas e equipamentos Electricos S.A., Asociación de Empresas Tecnológicas Innovalia) were field-trialed on four vertical-owned sites in close collaboration with the vendors (Ericsson España SA, Ericsson Telecomunicazioni, InterDigital Germany GMBH, NEC Laboratories Europe GMBH, Nokia Bell NV) and the operators (Altice Labs SA, Telecom Italia SPA, Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo SA) in the project.
The main outcomes of 5Growth are (i) Design and implementation of a platform, and the related components, interfaces and algorithms, to empower verticals to provision 5G connectivity and services directly at the verticals’ sites; (ii) Automated multi-level, cross-domain, hierarchical service orchestration with multi-domain management of resources with seamless integration at vertical sites with existing platforms; (iii) Vertical-oriented trial-based assessment, incl. 5G PPP KPIs; (iv) Tight integration between 5Growth and ICT-17 testing facilities with the goal of measuring KPIs and validating 5G capabilities; (v) Quantification of the advantages of the use of slicing, virtualization and orchestration.
We, together with 5Growth partners, designed, developed and integrated a management and orchestration stack able to handle the lifecycle management of ETSI NFV-compliant vertical industry virtual network services. AIML was also integrated in the workflow towards automated decision making (e.g., service scaling). This provides a generic framework for serving the stringent requirements of any 5G/6G vertical service, such as those under evaluation in the project (industry 4.0, energy, and transportation). In this way, we contributed to realize the vision of making 5G/6G networks become the substrate of all the communication needs of our society.
Code available at:
https://gitlab.cttc.es/cttc-cnd/MESCAL
https://gitlab.cttc.es/cttc-cnd/ELECTRA
Best fast track paper award IEEE NFVSDN 2020