5GCity Edge Virtualization Infrastructure Design (D3.1)

This deliverable presents the characteristics of the 5GCity virtualization platform and MEC node, which aims at building the city of the future 5G ICT service infrastructure by combining NFV and MEC concepts, extending state of the art virtualization techniques for the execution of virtual machines and for their networking features.

In the first part of the document, the project’s approach towards the coexistence of ETSI MEC and NFV standardization activities is explained. The key differences between them are presented, together with the planned activities to make them coexist in the 5GCity infrastructure. Then in Section 3 and Section 4, the computing and the networking virtualization features of the 5GCity infrastructure are detailed. Both Sections start with a description of what is the state of the art of each technology today, in order to introduce and clarify the advancements that will be developed in 5GCity, which are detailed respectively in Sections 3.2 and 4.2.

In greater detail, 5GCity computing extensions include unikernels and VMs developments to improve performance, efficiency  Unikraft, KVM) and security (EdgeNFVI, EdgeVIM). On the other hand, wireless slicing (RAN and Wi-Fi virtualization), vSwitch acceleration (VOSYSwitch) and MEC service function chaining are part of the project’s networking enhancements presented in this document.