Orange 5G Labs
Testbed
The Orange Romania (ORO) Testbed is part of the Orange 5G Labs that function as a vital hub for discovering and utilizing the capabilities of 5G technology. This ecosystem is designed to unify a diverse group of stakeholders, including industry partners, innovators, and businesses, to test, develop, and showcase new use cases empowered by the networks of the Future.
The ORO Testbed’s 2 sites are located in Bucharest, Romania and in Iași, Romania. Both locations are hosted within our Academic Partner’s venues. The ORO Testbed is a commercial deployment and fully supports academia and research partners to advance the experimentation, testing and validation of their applications.Beyond industrial applications, the 5G Labs ecosystem dares to extend its impact to sectors such as education, media, retail, healthcare, and smart cities.
ORO Testbed supports experimentation in 6G-PATH UC-EDU-1, and in the INTENTIONAL Project from the 6G-PATH Open Call #1. To further advance ORO’s Testbed capabilities, upgrades and extensions of the 5G System Components are planned, up to the finalization of the 6G-PATH Project, as well as the deployment of N-T-N Capabilities between the 2 sites, and the integration of A.I. processing capabilities in the EDGE, and in the Core.
Infrastructure
This section details the existing capabilities in the Orange 5G Labs testbed, offering insightful information regarding the 5G technology availability for RAN, Core, transport network, edge computing, virtualisation, orchestration, monitoring, security and associated platforms specific to each of the two 5G Labs and their outdoor radio extensions. All these features and capabilities are summarised in Table 2 and will be further developed in the following sections.
| 5G Infra\Testbed | RAN NSA/SA | 5GCN NSA/SA | IP Transport | IaaS | MANO & Monitoring | Security | MEC | Slicing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bucharest | Huawei SRAN18 NSA/SA Nokia AirScale
OAI / srsRAN | Ericsson 2.15 vEPC Nokia CMU23.10 5GC
OAI / Open5GS | CISCO NXOS IPFABRIC | OpenStack Ussuri VMware ESXi K8s | OSM v10 Prometheus Grafana | Fortinet 1000D DDOS | Collocated IaaS w 5G Core | SNSSAI based APN based |
Iasi | Ericsson DOTs NSA/SA OAI / srsRAN | Nokia CMU23.10 UPF OAI / Open5GS | CISCO NXOS IPFABRIC | OpenStack Ussuri K8s | Prometheus Grafana | Fortinet 1000D DDOS | Collocated IaaS w 5G UPF | SNSSAI based APN based |
Galati outdoor radio extension | Ericsson5GRANNSA/SA | _ | CISCO | _ | _ | _ | _ | SNSSAI based APN based |
Constanta outdoor radio extension | Huawei SRAN18 NSA/SA | _ | CISCO | _ | _ | _ | _ | SNSSAI based APN based |
Figure 13. ORO Testbed: 5G Labs architecture
ORO’s 5G Labs, from both Bucharest and Iasi, are the main places that host the infrastructure used in ORO’s 5G-enabled research and business activities. The Bucharest 5G Lab is located inside the CAMPUS Research Centre of UNSTPB and currently implements a full 5G SA infrastructure, comprising 5G RAN, Core, Edge Computing, and advanced Software Defined Networking (SDN) elements in the associated datacentre. The Iasi 5G Lab is located inside TUIASI’s Faculty of Electronics and Telecommunications and currently hosts 5G SA RAN components. Figure 13 depicts the overall architecture of ORO’s 5G Labs and the outdoor extensions of the testbeds, which are explained in the following sections.
Services
ORO’s 5G Labs testbed is based on virtualized network infrastructure, for both 5G options, the NSA and SA variants. For the NSA variant, the 5G Labs are connected to the commercial LTE Core Network.
The NSA Core architecture is based on the virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) solution from Ericsson, deployed in an OpenStack infrastructure – Orange IaaS.
The SA Core architecture uses the 5G SA Compact Mobility Unit (CMU) Core Network solution from Nokia, which is running on a virtualized infrastructure in the Bucharest 5G Lab datacentre. Virtualisation, management and orchestration.
The 5G Labs edge computing ecosystem supports multiple types of applications, ranging from bare metal solutions to virtualised or containerised variants, as showcased in Figure 14. The resulting modularised services, flexible and adaptable, can leverage the configurable networking capabilities of the testbed, on the fast deployment cycles, and dynamic services launched in the network. In this approach, the applications functions may be instantiated, terminated, configured, scaled in/out and updated more rapidly compared to traditional bare-metal implementations, to support the on-demand communication services instantiation, including configuration of specific network slices to support the applications requirements.
Figure 14. ORO Testbed: 5G Labs supported virtualisation layers
Development and Deployment Tools Implemented in the 5G Labs Testbed
OpenStack is the cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, providing standard IaaS functionality, orchestration, service management and user applications deployment, Cloud Infrastructure for Virtual Machines and Containers.
Docker is the open platform for developing, shipping, and running applications, by separating the applications from the infrastructure so the software can be quickly delivered; an application runs in a loosely isolated environment called a container, for a fast-consistent app deployment.
Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling and management of containerised applications; Kubernetes is the cloud native applications orchestrator.
CI/CD or Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery is the framework for creating a build, running automated software application tests, and extending the integrations to deploy all code changes to a testing and production environment.
OSM is the open source ETSI NFV Management and Orchestration (MANO) stack for E2E network service orchestration for telco services; OSM key aspects are the Information Model aligned with ETSI NFV SOL006 [1], the unified Northbound interfaces (NBIs) based on SOL005 [2], Network Services extension across multiple domains and Life Cycle Management of Network Slices;
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting system that collects metrics as series data; the data is stored on a single server node; the data collection is pulled/pushed and multiple modes of graph are supported; the tool works well for machine centric monitoring or monitoring of highly dynamic service-oriented architectures.
Grafana is an open-source multi-platform analytics and interactive visualisation web application, allowing dynamic dashboard creation for centralised data analysis, visualisation and alerting.
Figure 15. ORO Testbed: 5G Labs monitoring framework
Monitoring
Another key component in 5G networks is represented by network and services monitoring capabilities, the process of data collection of a variety of metrics, benefiting from different open software tools used for monitoring (Prometheus and Grafana) and data presentation through dashboards. In general, the monitoring stream is focused on three main areas:
- Infrastructure monitoring: collecting the data from the infrastructure components, e.g., UE, RAN, CN, Transport, virtualized infrastructure, MEC.
- Network and service performance monitoring: evaluating network resources, service status, users.
- Devices monitoring: collecting data related to the traffic volumes specific to certain network slices, as well as information related to the radio link quality.
In this approach, the 5G Labs testbed performs the monitoring process, for resources and elasticity profiling, testing and services validation, gathering general information about network infrastructure, the 5G services and the associated slicing parameters.
Within the 5G Labs ecosystem, the services are monitored since the deployment phase, the associated metrics and KPIs being collected and further used for preventive activities, network control, quality measurements, fault detections and E2E validation. The 5G Labs monitoring framework is highlighted in Figure 15.
Security
The 5G Labs testbed associated transport network architecture is split into three main components:
- 5G transport network in the Bucharest testbed, deployed as a cluster of advanced network equipment, mainly for the integration of the virtualized infrastructure, 5G gNBs and 5G Core Network.
- 5G transport network in the Iasi testbed, deployed as an extension of the Bucharest IP network infrastructure (LEAF) for the local UPF integration, gNB aggregation and direct connection to local edge computing servers.
- E2E transport network service configuration agents used for manual configuration of the network, dedicated traffic VPNs, QoS definition and service traffic KPIs assurance purposes.
This transport network was designed to fulfil the 5G transport requirements, based on the architecture illustrated in Figure 16, with two main key objectives:
- To ensure the high transport capacity and QoS requirements associated with the specific network service slices transported by the network.
- To provide dynamic, resilient and redundant transport paths.
The 5G Labs testbed transport network solution is using the IPFABRIC concept, using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) for control plane and Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) for data plane encapsulation. The solution offers a lot of benefits compared to the legacy layer-oriented datacentres using Core, Distribution and Access layers respectively.
Figure 16. ORO Testbed: Transport Network Architecture
Remote Access
ORO provides VPN SSL and/or VPN – IPSec remote access to the 5G Labs resources, on a project-based, per tenant, monitored and secured sessions. There are typical processes in place for establishing connectivity.
Figure 17. ORO Testbed: 5G Labs slicing architecture
Key Features and Assets
The 5G Labs implement two different network slices based on 3GPP NSSAIs parameters, providing eMBB with throughput up to ~1.5Gbps for DL and ~150Mbps for UL and URLLC with a one-way delay of <4ms, the overall slicing architecture being shown in Figure 17. At the RAN level, the slicing performance is ensured by leveraging gNB-specific 5G Quality Indicators (5GQIs) functionality for proper slice implementation (Uplink Preallocation, SR Period Configuration). The two slices have different Data Network Names (DNNs), “orange5glab” for the eMBB slice and “orangeurllc” for the URLLC slice.
The 5G Labs infrastructure can interact with various third-party testbeds through a unified South-Bound Interface (SBI) implemented through common APIs, while the translation between the specific interfaces implemented by the testbed management, monitoring and orchestration platforms is handled through testbed-specific plugins to be implemented by third-parties. Such plugins, when required, could implement the translation between the messages, protocols and information models adopted in the testbed and the common messages expected at the unified SBI of the 5G Labs unified platform. This approach enables the seamless interoperability of the various third-party testbeds with the 5G Labs centralised platform.
In this approach, the features and capabilities offered by individual testbeds may be slightly different; therefore, the set of functionalities supported by each testbed can be captured in the platform inventory, so that the platform components will be able to adapt their behaviour and procedures accordingly.
Summarising the main functionalities exposed by the 5G Labs testbed and the corresponding abstract interfaces:
- Network slice management: for creation, selection and configuration of network slices in the 5G infrastructure deployed in the testbed (Slice_conf interface);
- Onboarding: deployment of 5G-enabled applications, VNF packages and network service descriptors for vertical services through the orchestration platform connected to the edge/cloud computing infrastructure of the testbed (Nfvo_cat interface);
- Life cycle management: provisioning of network services for the instantiation of vertical services composed by 5G-enabled applications (Nfvo_lcm interface);
- Monitoring: configuration (Mon_conf) and retrieval through a publish/subscribe mechanism (Mon_pub) of monitoring data, for both service and infrastructure KPIs, including 5G network KPIs and metrics related to the consumption of computing resources.
Figure 18. ORO Testbed: Interfacing between the 5G Labs Platform and 3rd party testbeds
Testbed Extensions from Open Call #1
Figure 19. INTENTIONAL High-level System Architecture
INTENTIONAL (Nextworks)
INTENTIONAL – Intelligent ai-driveN inTENT interpretatION for 6G operAtors and verticaLs provides an infrastructure software extension to the 6G PATH ORO testbed to support intent-based interfaces for experimenters implementing a multi-layer intent management framework for fulfilment and assurance of service and network slice provisioning requests. Figure 19 shows the high-level system architecture of INTENTIONAL (slightly updated from the architecture reported in the proposal), highlighting its main functional elements and the standard APIs introduced to expose the new functionality for intent-based service management and mediate the interaction with the other systems and software platforms deployed in ORO testbed.
INTENTIONAL offers two interfaces for the declaration and request of service-level intents. The former is based on the TMForum Service Intent Management API (TMF921) and is implemented through a REST server interfacing with the Intent Manager. The intent is specified through a standard data model compliant with the TMF specification and it can be compiled by third-party systems. The latter exploits generative AI and LLM techniques and offers a prompt to the user, enabling the declaration of intents in natural language. This interface is offered by the Intent Interpreter. This module further facilitates intent declaration, identifying automatically some elements to complement and enrich the description provided by the user, considering the profile of the experimenter (e.g., associated use cases, test cases, quota profiles, devices…) and the surrounding context (e.g., required coverage and device capabilities). Accordingly, the interpreter produces a contextualised and personalised service intent, expressed in a machine-readable language and following the TMF921 information model, which constitutes the input to the Intent Manager. The Intent Manager processes the service intent, identifying application components and extracting the network intent (related to the required connectivity), using a format compliant with 3GPP TS 28.312 specification.
The Service and Network Intent Translators, operating on the two aspects of the intent, transform the high-level intent into technical requirements related to characteristics and performances of application components to deploy on the computing continuum and 5G/6G network slices create and/or configure in the infrastructure. This translation is performed considering the vertical service and application templates available in the Service Catalogue and the mobile network infrastructure deployed in the ORO testbed.
While in the proposal, the network infrastructure information was supposed to be gathered from a Network Inventory, after a discussion with the ORO team, it has been decided to onboard the network details in an internal database of the Network Intent Translator. As a consequence, the interaction with a legacy Network Inventory is no more needed. Moreover, it should be noted that the Service Catalogue in the ORO testbed is an integrated module of the Service Orchestration component, even if providing its own APIs.
Targeted Use Cases
- All verticals are accepted.
All use case topics are accepted. Testbed prefers use cases targeting XR/VR content development and integration into Education platforms.