The march to next generation networks continues.
Deutsche Telekom and Huawei on Thursday announced another 5G breakthrough: the successful demonstration of autonomous network slicing on an end-to-end 5G system.
According to the companies, the technology used in the demonstration was an expansion of software previously used by the pair to demonstrate network slicing for 5G use case demands. The upgraded implementation, they said, added dynamic and real-time autonomous slicing of the 5G Radio Access Network (RAN), Data Center (DC), and interconnecting transmission network. The companies said slice creation was completed in less than a minute during the demonstration.
The pair said bandwidth-based transport network slicing was used for the test and slicing automation was based on Service Oriented Network Auto Creation (SONAC), which “uses software-defined topology (SDT), software defined protocol (SDP), and software-defined resource allocation (SDRA) to ensure the automatic implementation of slice management, service deployment, resource scheduling, and fault recovery based strictly on a detailed and thorough network data analysis.”
“Network slicing is envisaged for 5G to provide differentiated connectivity quickly and efficiently for the diverse future applications that our customers will demand,” DT CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn said. “With automated network slicing, the development of highly flexible end-to-end network slicing becomes more complete.”
DT and Huawei said end-to-end network slicing will help support a variety of 5G services, and noted Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) and Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication (uRLLC) as particular network classes that could be built as slices.
Network slicing is one of those technologies that has been much buzzed about in the telecom industry as of late, and DT and Huawei aren’t the only ones working on it.
Back in June, Nokia said it was planning to demonstrate how network slicing could enable operators to utilize unique network characteristics to deliver specific applications and services at the 5G World conference in London. Ericsson has also been exploring network slicing, having signed a MOU with operator China Unicom in May to accelerate the development of next generation networks.
