In 2024, the core network will usher in new opportunities!

In today’s article, let’s talk about the core network.

After the New Year's bell rang, we officially entered 2024. In this new year, what is the most noteworthy thing in the mobile communications industry? Of course, the upcoming 5G-Advanced (hereinafter referred to as 5G-A).

In a few months, the 3GPP R18 standard will be officially frozen, thus opening the curtain for the full commercialization of 5G-A. 2024 is also regarded as the first year for the commercialization of 5G-A.

For 5G-A, people's focus is mainly on new services and new terms such as RedCap, interawareness integration and passive Internet of Things, or the speed increase of "10 Gigabit downlink and 1 Gigabit uplink" of wireless air interface.

So, will there be any new changes in the core network, another key link in the mobile communication network? Will it also bring us surprises?

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From 2G to 5G, the status of "big guys" has changed

Readers who are familiar with Xiaozaojun know that Xiaozaojun is an engineer with a core network background. Since he entered the communications industry in 2006, he has had an indissoluble bond with the core network.

The core network at that time was in the era of fixed-line and 2G/3G, and was a real "big boss". It was located at the center of the network, integrating core functions such as billing strategy, signaling routing, and service management, and was unparalleled in its importance.

Over the past decade, as mobile networks have moved from 2G to 5G, I have witnessed the technological evolution and architectural changes of the core network.

Early core networks were closed and coupled, using proprietary hardware and closed architecture from equipment vendors.

In the 2G/3G era, the core network gradually became based on the "CT+IP" technology, achieving the separation of the media plane and the control plane, as well as full IP. The packet domain rose, the circuit domain weakened, and then the IMS domain appeared.

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In the 4G/5G era, the changes are even more dramatic. "CT+IP" fully embraces IT and becomes "CT+IP+IT", moving towards a more thorough openness. The traditional proprietary hardware core network is fully cloud-based, ushering in NFV (network function virtualization) and microservice architecture.

After the transformation, all core network elements became virtual machines (VMs) on the server. This once powerful "big boss" began to be gradually forgotten by people. People only think of it when a large-scale failure occurs.

So, has the core network really been relegated to the backline?

Of course not. The core network of the first half of 5G is more like "retreating" than "retiring". It has learned from the IT industry and introduced advanced technology genes such as virtualization, cloud computing, and slicing, focusing on "distribution" and "decentralization" in order to make itself more reliable in architecture and more agile in deployment.

All of this practice is to wait for a new opportunity to shine again.

Now, this opportunity has come, and that is intelligence.

Bringing wisdom into your mind and answering questions of your soul

Back to the communications business itself, what kind of sparks will emerge when the core network that integrates the essence of IT encounters the wave of intelligence?

Let us try to answer three soul-searching questions:

1. What will the future communication business scenario be like?

2. Has the capacity of the Internet really reached its limit?

3. Can customers manage the current network when it is delivered to them?

To put it simply, the positioning of mobile communications is to serve connections. As a component of mobile communications, the mission of the core network is to incubate more business scenarios and exert more powerful network performance. At the same time, it is also necessary to reduce the difficulty and cost of its own management and operation.

The arrival of intelligence has pointed out the direction for the core network on these three key issues.

• Business Intelligence: Opening up new imagination space

First, let’s talk about business.

Since the emergence of video calls, many people have believed that this is the ultimate form of call services. However, it turns out that people's imagination is still too limited.

Nowadays, it has become a new trend to add "ultra-clear, intelligent, and interactive" capabilities to calls and upgrade traditional single-modal communication to multi-modal communication.

The so-called unimodal communication has the typical characteristics of single object, single content and transparent exchange.

Take a phone call as an example. Both parties in the call are human, the content is voice, and the network transmits voice transparently. The same is true for video calls. When people communicate with each other, the network transmits audio and video transparently without any processing.

This method of communication only uses part of our hearing and vision, which limits the accuracy of information transmission and the depth of understanding.

Multimodal communication opens the door to a new world.

It expands communication to the dimensions of touch and environmental perception. Through wearable devices, handles, tactile gloves, cameras, etc., it adds the expressions, gestures, movement status of the communication objects, as well as environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and altitude to communication, thereby realizing multi-object, multi-content, and multi-exchange.

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In the 5G-A era, the core network continues to evolve, and we have "new calls". It can realize the superposition of "ultra-clear, intelligent, and interactive" capabilities mentioned above, bringing us a magical multi-modal communication scenario.

Let me give you some examples.

By adding ultra-clear video capabilities to calls, you can transform the black screen during the call into an ultra-clear and smooth picture, saying goodbye to the mosaics and freezes in OTT calls (such as WeChat video calls).

Superimposing data channel interaction capabilities during calls can allow calls and business to proceed simultaneously, giving rise to industry applications such as remote auto insurance damage assessment, remote ticket purchase, and remote operation and maintenance, improving corporate communication efficiency and user satisfaction.

It is even more amazing to combine intelligent capabilities with calls. It can combine intelligent capabilities with calls to provide rich and colorful functions such as real-time intelligent translation, AIGC anime avatars, knowledge search, intelligent recording, etc., giving users a completely different experience.

New business scenarios will not only improve users' communication efficiency, but also increase the fun of communication. From the perspective of operators, these new businesses will enable them to have the ability to operate content, bringing about a double increase in the number of users and ARPU value.

Currently, the new call service has been tested in commercial use in China and has become a pioneer in business intelligence.

• Network Intelligence: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Network

Now let's look at the network itself.

The development of mobile communications is no longer centered on "traffic management", but has shifted to "experience management". After all, no matter how large the network traffic is, if the bandwidth is not enough or the latency cannot meet the requirements, then it cannot bring a good experience to users, and there is no way to obtain satisfaction and value return.

Traditional user experience optimization is achieved through static 5QI (5G QoS identifier), which cannot perceive user experience in real time and has poor timeliness.

Today, with the development of intelligent technology, we can apply corresponding capabilities to the network to achieve user experience perception, experience monetization and differentiated operations.

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The specific approach is to create an intelligent plane centered on NWDAF, collect and store end-to-end network element service logs, KPIs and other data, and centrally perform modeling, training, and reasoning to achieve quantifiable prediction of user experience QoE (Quality of Experience).

By building a network intelligence plane and superimposing the inherent intelligence of network elements, real-time service and experience perception, experience evaluation and monitoring, experience optimization, and service experience management can be achieved. In this way, operators can continuously optimize the scheduling of network resources and build experience realization and differentiated management capabilities.

In addition, it is also possible to superimpose endogenous intelligence on traditional network elements (UPF, PCF, etc.) based on standard functions to achieve intelligent perception, intelligent analysis, and intelligent resource scheduling. This kind of experience improvement brought about by the joint collaboration of intelligent planes and network elements is also real-time, evaluable, and closed-loop.

Take UPF, a key network element on the user plane of the core network, as an example.

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In the 5G-A era, the "10 Gigabit downlink and 1 Gigabit uplink" on the wireless side will bring great forwarding pressure to the core network side.

Therefore, the industry needs to upgrade UPF intelligently and add a network acceleration unit to UDF. When large traffic occurs, this unit can combine the global scheduling algorithm to flexibly use user-plane computing resources and achieve associated accelerated forwarding under the premise of optimal resource use.

Based on the network's inherent intelligence, the core network becomes "smarter" and can perceive the characteristics of different protocol flows, classify them, and combine intelligent differentiation algorithms to achieve the best experience under high concurrency.

When instantaneous flow bursts occur, the intelligent core network can perceive them in real time and perform flow shaping in real time to eliminate experience degradation.

In summary, core network + intelligence can really achieve twice the result with half the effort and fully unleash the potential of the network.

• Intelligent Operation and Maintenance: Extremely Simplified Operation and Maintenance Based on Intelligence

Finally, let’s talk about the long-standing problem of core networks - operation and maintenance.

Core networks have always been known for their cumbersome architecture and complex services. The operation and maintenance of core networks is also a job that many communications engineers are afraid to avoid.

For core network operation and maintenance, the most effective way to improve it is, of course, to introduce intelligence and realize intelligent operation and maintenance.

Big models have been very popular in the past year. In the field of communications, big models can also be implemented. By combining with intent-driven, they can bring virtual digital assistants and digital experts to assist network operation and maintenance.

The digital assistant enables conversational processing of high-frequency issues in daily operation and maintenance, automates the deterministic part of daily operation and maintenance, and greatly improves operation and maintenance efficiency.

Digital experts are specialized in dealing with high-level uncertain scenarios in the operation and maintenance process. Through joint analysis of large models and specialized small models, it can quickly locate complex faults in the core network and achieve "highly stable network" and "efficient operation and maintenance".

Network security has shifted from passive processing to active prevention. The probability of network risks is greatly reduced, and the manpower and resources required for operation and maintenance can also be significantly reduced. This is a great thing for operators.

Final Words

In short, the core network is undergoing a technological revolution. The new generation of 5.5G core network, based on the 5G core network, upgrades the gateway to achieve a 10G experience.

5.5G core network is superimposed with intelligence, thus possessing inherent business intelligence, network intelligence and operation and maintenance intelligence. The communication mode is further upgraded to create a new multi-modal network, which will accelerate the network commercialization of operators.

In every network revolution, the core network is the vanguard, which has a lot to do with the IT genes of the core network itself.

In this wave of intelligence, the core network is still expected to be the first to achieve breakthroughs.

The industry has reached a consensus that the comprehensive intelligence of the core network is an inevitable trend. Only a natively intelligent core network can provide strong support for network service innovation, incubate new scenarios, generate new experiences, and bring new value.

We hope that the core network can seize this valuable opportunity, become the true "strongest brain", and drive thousands of industries to move towards the intelligent world.