nCore: Clean Slate Next-G Mobile Core Network Architecture for Scalability and Low Latency

This chapter addresses the challenge of designing and validating a standalone next-generation mobile core network architecture necessary to support the requirements of 5G radio access technologies and beyond. The current 3GPP specification for 5G mobile networks has evolved through two generations of cellular (3G and 4G), and is fundamentally limited by its evolutionary design which incorporates legacy signaling from switched telecom networks integrated with Internet protocols using a complicated design based on gateways and tunnels. The mobile core network design has to change significantly in order to meet the increasingly complex and diverse requirements associated with Next-G wireless systems, thus motivating the consideration of clean-slate designs. This chapter presents nCore, a next generation mobile core network design that can be used in conjunction with the “standalone (SA)” mode of the 3GPP specification. The design of nCore is based on distributed information-centric architecture with unique identifiers for network objects along with the concept of locator-ID separation. A clean slate flat network core architecture is presented with details of the design and key protocol components. The chapter concludes with system-level prototyping and validation of nCore on an ORBIT/COSMOS testbed. The measurements show that nCore substantially reduces control plane latency overhead, resulting in significant increases in performance and capacity.