Achieving End-to-End Reliability of Mission-Critical Traffic in Softwarized 5G Networks

TLDR

Network softwarization in 5G enables programmable, flexible operation and promises high‑rate mission‑critical traffic, yet a unified, end‑to‑end reliable system that coordinates radio access and core network resources remains undeveloped. The study proposes a softwarized 5G architecture to achieve end‑to‑end reliability for mission‑critical traffic. The authors develop a mathematical model of critical session transfers and implement a hardware prototype to evaluate its impact on other users and validate design choices.

Abstract

Network softwarization is a major paradigm shift, which enables programmable and flexible system operation in challenging use cases. In the fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks, the more advanced scenarios envision transfer of high-rate mission-critical traffic. Achieving end-to-end reliability of these stringent sessions requires support from multiple radio access technologies and calls for dynamic orchestration of resources across both radio access and core network segments. Emerging 5G systems can already offer network slicing, multi-connectivity, and end-to-end quality provisioning mechanisms for critical data transfers within a single software-controlled network. Whereas these individual enablers are already in active development, a holistic perspective on how to construct a unified, service-ready system as well as understand the implications of critical traffic on serving other user sessions is not yet available. Against this background, this paper first introduces a softwarized 5G architecture for end-to-end reliability of the mission-critical traffic. Then, a mathematical framework is contributed to model the process of critical session transfers in a softwarized 5G access network, and the corresponding impact on other user sessions is quantified. Finally, a prototype hardware implementation is completed to investigate the practical effects of supporting mission-critical data in a softwarized 5G core network, as well as substantiate the key system design choices.