5G xHaul Sharing as Slice Implementation with inter- and intra-operator orchestration

Abstract

The decomposition of a 5G radio access network (RAN) accelerates inter-operator infrastructure sharing of the corresponding transport network as well as the centralized deployment of a centralized unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU). We propose an architecture that enables inter-operator infrastructure sharing of 5G xHaul as slices and on-demand creation of xHaul network slices dynamically over multiple network operators that are interconnected and orchestrated with the standardized interface of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) Transport API (TAPI) and corresponding standard from Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF). Through a proof of concept, we validated the implementation of the architecture in three live network domains for 5G xHaul.