Overview:
Genew UnionCore unified User Plane (uUP) consists of EPC and 5GC network elements of user plane, they are GGSN, SGW-U, PGW-U, UPF, that they are all based on 3GPP standard and ETSI NFV standard, each of them can be solely deployed as standalone VNF or convergently deployed as a unified product but representing multiple responsibilities.
Genew UnionCore is designed for enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC), ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (uRLLC) application scenarios etc., providing high speed data, network slicing, mobile edge computing, on-demand mobility, capability openness and other representative service solutions in 4G and 5G. Genew UnionCore leverages NFV and Cloud technologies to simply operators’ network and maximize IT resources, and helps operator establish an end-to-end core network architecture to confront business challenges and technical challenges with simplicity, high quality and low TCO solution.
Product Architecture:
The system architecture of uUP is based on the standard ETSI NFV architecture. The main functional components can be deployed as VNFs on the virtual infrastructure and managed by the cloud platform. The system architecture of uUP is shown in the figure below:
Genew UnionCore uUP is developed based on the idea of atom-level convergence, that means, not only the system is disaggregated into different modules, each module is a totally standalone Virtualized Network Function Component (VNFC) that could be deployed in a VM or Container, but also for both 2/3G, 4G and 5G signaling, are dealt within the unified Session Management (SM) module.
The module functions are described in the table below:
Module | Category | Description |
RDB | Memory database | The RDB stores the PDP context with flow table, GTP parameters or the Network Function parameters. It is based on Redis DB, Redis DB is an opensource memory database with extraordinary performance and fertile functions. |
OMU | O&M | The OMU is the Operation and Management Unit, provides routine FCAPS maintenance operation. |
SMU | Interface & Service | The SMU is the Session Management Unit, deals with the N4 interface, processes the PFCP message, manages TEID, charging report etc. |
SPU | Service | The SPU is the Slow Processing Unit, matches the user packets with PFCP rules, generates the flow table and provides the URR statics etc. |
FPU | Service | The FPU the Fast Processing Unit, deals with user packets according to flow table, carries the URR and QoS operations etc. |
DPDK | Service | The DPDK is an opensource highly efficient I/O processing unit, it reads or writes user packets from or to NICs. |
EMS | O&M | The EMS consists of NEs’ O&M Agents and a Web Server to provide Browser & Server O&M architecture, and it also includes part of MANO’s functions like NFVO and VNFM. Its name is NuMax Cloud. |
Highlights:
Genew UnionCore including uUP is developed based on the idea of atom-level convergence, that means, not only the system is disaggregated into different modules, each module is a totally standalone Virtualized Network Function Component (VNFC) that could be deployed in a VM or Container, but also for both 4G and 5G signaling, are dealt within the unified Session Management (SM) module.
This improves the system integration for a single user only occupies one resource not matter what access type is. This also improves the service quality when user switching between 4G and 5G, for the UE IP address is on the same Network Element, there is no service interruption during the RAT handover.
Genew UnionCore products including uUP are all based on the standard ETSI NFV architecture, inside those products, there are different modules, such as, RDB as the database stores the users’ context and status, SPU as the service processing unit deals with specific services, including interface processes to deal with different interfaces of each Network Element. And this design actually separates the data layer from the service logic layer, the service logic layer doesn’t contain any key data such as user context, user status and interface context etc.
The stateless architecture enhances the system reliability, the failure of one service processing unit of service logic layer will be recovered quickly without any service impact, for the key data is stored in data layer, in the RDB, and other normal service processing unit will fetch the data from RDB to continue current service. This also facilitates scale-in, scale-out and upgrade of the system.
The ETSI NFV architecture supports three-layer decoupling: software layer, virtualization layer and hardware layer. Genew UnionCore products including uUP are all based on the standard ETSI NFV architecture, they can run on universal Cloud OS systems and Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers and provide carriers with flexible and economical elastic network solutions. Each application and each operating system run on independent Virtual Machines (VMs) or applications run on independent Containers. By sharing virtualized hardware resources, the Genew UnionCore optimizes hardware resource utilization and reduces the types of hardware in use, which enables carriers to quickly respond to market changes.
Genew UnionCore with its MANO solution supports dynamic expansion or contraction of various capacities based on the system load, such as the number of concurrent users and CPU capacity. This ensures efficient resource utilization and complies with the concept of energy saving and emission reduction.
Genew UnionCore adopts the Service Based Architecture, there are different microservices like RDB/SMU/SPU/FPU/OMU units inside of the system, and they could be deployed on Virtual Machines or Containers, to achieve the elastic scaling capabilities and speed of introducing new functionality.
The overall implementation practices, recognized as Cloud Native, are adopted by Genew UnionCore to consistently and fully take the advantage of the possibilities of the cloud to support cloud-oriented business models and satisfy the increased automation that needed to cater for an unpredictable competitive landscape.
All Genew UnionCore products including uUP share the same system software architecture that enables centralized management and distributed processing, facilitating the control and management of large-capacity mobile networks. Genew UnionCore uUP supports 1+1 active and standby redundancy, and supports the DNS based pool-like solution for Gateways. In addition, Genew UnionCore has powerful processing capability and scalability, ensuring that there is no single point of failure, and supports component redundancy and disaster recovery.
Genew UnionCore provides whole set of FCAPS management APIs for an easy integration with existing O&M system, provides MML based configuration operation to enable automated operations like patch/rollback etc., and provides end-to-end user trace throughout all network elements and the fault observation logs to accurately and quickly identify problems on a living network.
Genew UnionCore is designed and implemented with the carrier grade integrity and performance to meet the growing requirement of high bandwidth and density of 5G. To help operator save TCO, especially save every cost per bit of data on the living network, Genew UnionCore leverages the cutting-edge technologies such OVS, DPDK, SR-IOV, hardware acceleration by FPGA to achieve a high throughput, transcoding speed and improved integration of the whole system.
All Genew UnionCore products including uUP are implemented based on 3GPP standard, all interfaces, procedures, message parameters are strictly designed as the 3GPP standard definition. This greatly enables a smooth interoperability with different NEs from various vendors, such as interoperation with RAN, Core Network of Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, ZTE etc., that enables a great rich deployment experience in commercial network.
Genew UnionCore also provides great customization support for operators, that means in the living network, the circumstance is always much more complex than expectation, operators need O&M API and log file adaption, or modification on interfaces or procedures, or a creative solution distinguished from 3GPP standard. Therefore, the customization is needed to provide perfect and suitable solution to help operator improve efficiency and revenue.
