5GROWTH: E2E transport-aware orchestration

Overview of the 5GROWTH pilot on E2E transport-aware orchestration

Cloud platforms are gaining momentum as radio functionalities and vertical applications migrate from dedicated platforms towards virtual machines running on commercial off-the-shelf servers, located on premise of the vertical to preserve confidentiality and reduce latency, or in the central office of operators. The 5GROWTH platform simplifies the instantiation and operations of services and network slices over a virtualised view of the infrastructure. This pilot thus exemplifies the work in 5GROWTH aimed at validating the performance of 5G systems deployed on vertical premises from significant advances in the interworking of 5G with a transport infrastructure through an orchesration platform.

The pilot highlights many of the 5GROWTH potential impacts through a pilot in Italy involving COMAU, Ericsson, TIM, the Turin University of Technology, Scuola Superiore S. Anna and Nextworks. Three use cases have been deployed between the COMAU plant and TIM  central office, in relation to 5G Non-Standalone (NSA). These use cases and related ITU-defined 5G functionalities are:

1. Digital Twin, requiring Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC).
2. Monitoring and Telemetry, requiring massive Machine-type Communications (mMTC). 
3. Remote support, requiring enhanced Moble Broadband (eMBB). 

It also exploits a multi-domain solution provided through the 5G-EVE infrastructure.  

In June 2021, the pilot successfully demonstrated a cross-layer solutions for the control of 5G slicing in support of end-to-end vertical services. 

The pilot architecture a shared transport network for running applications in a remote cloud platform and an E2E transport-aware orchestrator to handle 5G slicing in support of different QoS levels across radio, transport, and cloud infrastructures. The E2E orchestration is based on 3GPP RAN slicing model/ETSI MANO, suitably extended for the automatic placement of VNF/PNF considering transport characteristics. Hence, the QoS mapping on slices becomes transport aware and enables the cross-optimization of radio, transport, and cloud. It includes an Ericsson 5G radio network, operating on TIM’s spectrum, a transport network, systems for industry automation and IIoT platform by COMAU, and the E2E transport-aware orchestrator.

To assess the implementation of 5G slicing, the execution time to manage the network slices is measured in the 5GROWT stack, which runs as Docker containers on a Linux machine. Cloudify v5.1.0 is used as open-source NFVO for the service orchestrator.

5G Empowerment

5GROWTH has conducted an in-depth business analysis for the Comau pilot based on a usage scenario at a plant of 7700 m2, serving 44 robots with a support team of 10 people. 5G enables more efficient service provisioning and operation, a faster change of production line and predictive maintenance, loading towards hitless production. The largest saving comes from “advanced predictive maintenance” enabled by 5G. This means increasing the number of sensors fitted to equipment from one or two to measuring dozens of different parameters and ensuring the data is always reliably collected in real-time. Minimising the interruptions means obtaining impressive savings.

5G Key Performance Indicators

E2E orchestration: Slice instantiation and termination were repeated 20 times, showing a neglible delay for the E2E orchestration of 1 sec and 21 second-delay of the open-source NFVO.

The additional overhead introduced to control the radio resources is also negligible compared with the time required to instantiate and configure the virtual functions, with a global service provisioning time that is in the order of 23 seconds.

Videos and Demos

• COMAU Pilot Digital Twins Apps Use Case (March 2021)

Accolades

One of the ten winners of the 2021 5G-IA Trials Working Group annual competition, featuring in the 5G Infrastructure PPP Brochure - Trials and Pilots. 

Use Case Summary Data

Location: Italy

Partners involved: COMAU, Ericsson, TIM, the Turin University of Technology, Scuola Superiore S. Anna and Nextworks

EC funding reference: H2020-ICT-2018-3; ICT-19-2019 - Advanced 5G validation trials across multiple vertical industries

Funding cycle: June 2019-February 2022