OTE

Testbed

OTE testbed is located in Maroussi-Athens Greece. It is managed by the Core network testing Laboratory of OTE and includes a 5G SA network and cloud infrastructure. The transport network and network elements used, such as servers and switches, are located in the same premises as the packet core and the RAN. OTE switches are interconnected to the OTE IP Core, using a 10 Gbps capacity line, allowing public internet access and remote connectivity.

Infrastructure

Figure 20. OTE Testbed: Overview of testbed architecture

The basic architecture designed for the OTE testbed consists of four main components: 5GC, RAN, Cloud Infrastructure and Slice Manager. Figure 20 presents an overview of the end-to-end network infrastructure. The testbed allows internet access and supports secure VPN connectivity for developers to access cloud infrastructure and install applications and services.

In the current deployment, the radio access network covers an indoor area of 300 m2. NR technology is integrated with the SA Rel. 16 architecture. NR is expected to improve the network’s flexibility, support its high performance, and efficiently use the available spectrum. Massive MIMO increases coverage and capacity while beamforming is also adopted.

The 5G SA Core network architecture is cloud-native and based on containers and service-based architecture (SBA). Thus, the functionalities are handled by a set of Containerised Network Functions (CNFs) that can access each other’s services. This approach allows the quick launch of new services and offers enhanced adaptability. It also provides flexibility in deployment by separating the User Plane (UP) functions from the Control Plane (CP), offering the choice of either a centralised approach or a distributed one regarding the user plane traffic, thus enabling Edge Computing. A new important feature in 5G is network slicing, which establishes independent traffic flows with different Quality of Service (QoS) conditions.

Services

Virtualisation, Management and Orchestration

The OTE testbed includes an orchestrator mainly to support slice management as presented in Figure 20.

Monitoring

The OTE testbeds integrate case-specific monitoring tools. For the use case CITIES-2-Automated Logistics, the VIAVI NITRO software platform will be used. The application and the software probe, integrating the monitoring solution, will be installed on VMs (Fusion Controller, Fusion ESAM to manage Smart SFPs: JMEPs, Fusion Analytics, software probe vPMA for TWAMP initiation). Hardware probes and JMEP Smart SFP will also be installed in various network parts.

A KAFKA interface will be activated to transfer measurement data to the ELCM.

The application GUI specifies the measurement scenarios, runs them, and gets results. The output obtained is the network performance measurements. The commercial VIAVI NITRO SW platform (FUSION application) is used.
The monitoring system comprises hardware and software probes that gather measurement data and a central application that collects and presents the data.

Figure 21. Monitoring application dashboard

1 See: https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/solutions/nitro

2 See: https://kafka.apache.org/

3 The VIAVI Network Integrated Test, Real-time analytics and Optimisation (NITRO) solution is the first real-time intelligence platform that connects testing and service activation data from instruments with software-based planning, provisioning, assurance and optimisation probes and applications, working seamlessly across mobile, fibre, cable, cloud and enterprise networks. For further information also see: https://www.viavisolutions.com/en-us/solutions/nitro

Security

To use the network services, UEs must follow the registration process defined by 5G technology. At the same time, developers are not allowed access, as this is a closed network that only authorised network engineers have access to. Developers can access the cloud infrastructure to install applications that will be exploited by the use cases only by using a VPN account, the credentials of which are created and provided by OTE.

Remote Access

Remote access is supported by using a VPN account or setting IPsec tunnel.

Key Features and Assets

Technologies that are supported by NR allow RAN to use new bands and increased bandwidth which allows the future expansion. At the same time, massive MIMO will improve the throughput while beamforming, apart from achieving higher throughput, will increase coverage. Multi-Services transmission could be supported, as well as end-to-end slicing.

The design of the packet core supports capabilities that increase flexibility and virtualisation, such as slice selection and Virtual Network Functions. Finally, a monitoring system that is installed collects data using an automated process which runs 24×7, with 1min monitoring granularity and 10 ms sampling granularity. Thresholds can be set to allow for cockpit view of KPIs, in accordance to the designated performance targets. KPI metrics measured are latency, packet loss, packet delay, frame loss and traffic throughput.

Testbed Extensions from Open Call #1

CITYSENS (Institute of Accelerating Systems and Applications)

CITYSENS project will develop tools useful for management of end-to-end network slices. The tool’s capability to collect network KPI measurements will be an important addition to the testbed. The existing slicing mechanism has been designed to leverage real-time network performance data, enabling automated slice switching. Therefore, CITYSENS will offer a valuable extension to the current implementation.

TERANTIEC (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya)

Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) is a network architecture feature that is not currently implemented in the testbed. TERANTIEC will enable MEC integration, enhancing existing services and improving performance, especially for applications that require low latency.

Targeted Use Cases

Applications installed on robotic systems for real-time data processing at the edge or user equipment.
Optimization mechanisms and techniques for improving production processes.

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