5G for the Connected World

4Next Generation Network Architecture

Devaki Chandramouli¹, Subramanya Chandrashekar², Andreas Maeder³, Tuomas Niemela⁴, Thomas Theimer³ and Laurent Thiebaut⁵

¹Nokia, Irving, TX, USA

²Nokia, Bangalore, India

³Nokia, Munich, Germany

⁴Nokia, Espoo, Finland

⁵Nokia, Paris‐Saclay, France

4.1 Drivers and Motivation for a New Architecture

4.1.1 New Services Emerging

Consumer demand continues to be insatiable with ever growing appetite for bandwidth that is needed for 4K or even 8K video streaming, augmented and virtual reality and multiple devices, among other use cases. On the same token, operators want the network to be “better, faster and cheaper” without compromising any of these three elements. Furthermore, operator demands are not homogeneous in terms of requirements or in terms of timing for deployment of new services.

In recent years, the emergence of Internet of Things (IoTs) has provided us with abundance of different use cases, each of them with their own demands for the network. This creates a business landscape for network operators where many new business partners, verticals, come and go, each with a need for a service level agreement (SLA) of their own.

As opposed to previous generations that targeted one type of device (a mobile phone for 2G, a smartphone for 3G/4G) and one type of user, the 5G network needs to serve a diverse set of devices and applications, e.g. from super secured and expensive phones for security forces to cheap and “dumb” IoT devices. Furthermore, the ...