InterDigital Demonstrates World’s First Service-Based 5G Control Plane
Service-based architecture principles and InterDigital’s platform used to realize control plane communication using standard servers
WILMINGTON, Del., July 05, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- InterDigital (NASDAQ:IDCC), a mobile technology research and development company, today released details of a successful demonstration of a 5G control plane based on service-based architecture (SBA) principles. When compared to existing 4G control plane principles, the demonstration showed how network control functions can be wholly created and run in cloud environments as web service-like implementations using standard servers, reducing cost but also dramatically improving scalability, velocity and flexibility in creating virtual control plane services. The demonstration was given at the NGMN Forum in Paris, hosted by Orange, on 17th & 18th April.
The first such demonstration of its kind, InterDigital showed its solution for 3GPP’s common communication enabler (“COEN”), which governs the control plane services in a 5G control plane. The demonstration showed how a service-based model for a 5G control plane can utilize the communication model of today’s web services to create multiple software instances within a “cloud infrastructure”. This approach supports the evolution of future telecoms infrastructure towards fully software defined networks and virtualized compute resources.
“The majority of 5G effort and focus to date has been on radio access development, but fully virtualized and dynamic core infrastructure is vital if 5G is to accomplish its latency, throughput and capacity goals,” said Dr. Robert DiFazio, Vice President, InterDigital Labs. “Web service firms like Amazon and Google have successfully used a service-based approach to create highly scalable cloud infrastructures, and our demonstration shows that adopting such techniques can solve many of the cost and efficiency challenges ahead for 5G.”
InterDigital’s COEN was based on its SBA – Service Based Architecture – technology suite, which combines the ability to flexibly route and quickly redirect service requests to virtualized service instances residing in localized micro data centres. InterDigital’s solution works through dynamic web servers, which can be spun up or down according to user need, dramatically reducing latency and throughput in line with 5G specifications.
In this solution, visibility and registration of new service instances can be achieved in less than 20ms, bringing significantly higher resource efficiency and speed to the delivery of IP-based services. The solution utilizes an edge IP architecture that deploys a topology manager, rendezvous points, a surrogate manager that redirects resources within the edge network, and SBA network access points that interface with the standard internet. InterDigital’s SBA solution can be licensed by vendors to operators.
About InterDigital®
InterDigital develops mobile technologies that are at the core of devices, networks, and services worldwide. We solve many of the industry's most critical and complex technical challenges, inventing solutions for more efficient broadband networks and a richer multimedia experience years ahead of market deployment. InterDigital has licenses and strategic relationships with many of the world's leading wireless companies. Founded in 1972, InterDigital is listed on NASDAQ and is included in the S&P MidCap 400® index.
InterDigital is a registered trademark of InterDigital, Inc. Chordant is a trademark of InterDigital.
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InterDigital Contact:
Patrick Van de Wille
Email: +1 (858) 210-4814
