D1.3 5G EVE end to end facility reference architecture for vertical industries and core applications

5G commercial network rollout is already happening in Europe and vertical industry companies from different sectors have a need to test their 5G-based applications in a 5G-enabled infrastructure flexible enough to reproduce different live network operation conditions, in order to ensure successful commercialization.
5G Infrastructure PPP Phase 2 projects (2017-2019) [1] contributed to the prototyping, experimentation and trialling of 5G technologies and components for specific use-cases but it is in 5G Infrastructure PPP Phase 3 projects [2] like 5G EVE where 5G components and technologies are integrated together to provide the end-to-end (E2E) facility with the scope to support verticals to run their tests.
This deliverable describes the 5G end-to-end facility architecture that will be supported in the project for the vertical industries. The document first introduces the Actors participating in the Experiment Flow, next, detailed information of each of the Experiment Flow phases including inputs, actors involved and outputs of each of them is provided, and finally, the 5G end-to-end facility architecture supporting the Experiment Flow is fully described.
The description of 5G end-to-end facility architecture approach proposed in this document not only includes a description of each 5G EVE platform functional layer and blocks included on each layer, but also information about 5G key features deployed which enrich the 5G EVE platform with 5G capabilities required to fulfill experiment requirements of the use cases described by the Verticals in D1.1 [3]. The 5G key features described include novel technologies like network slicing, programmability, virtualization, edge computing and 5G NR.
Different topology views and workflows depicting internal processes within the 5G EVE platform and interactions between different actors and the 5G EVE platform are also included for a better understanding. Finally, examples of templates for the different blueprints that will be used along the Experiment Flow process are included in the Appendix.
5G EVE end-to-end facility will start from being compliant with 3GPP Release 15 [4] and will evolve in time along the project time schedule in terms of technologies and encompass with 3GPP evolutions in order to achieve performance expectations envisioned for 5G. Connected to that, the availability of 5G EVE platform capabilities described in this document, and linked to such technology evolution, might change in case of external factors (interoperability issues between vendors, 5G devices availability, frequency auctions not celebrated according to initial plans,…), finally impacting in the expected deployment readiness.
5G Non-Stand Alone (NSA) commercial networks already exist in the world, but the big challenge is in the 5G Stand-Alone (SA) solutions where a new core network (5GC) has been designed to fulfil IMT-2020 [5] performance requirements expectations for innovative use cases and applications to come. Therefore, products developed for new 5GC could not have during first coming months the stability and maturity required for its commercial use, and so, it may introduce some limitations during the execution of trials and use cases using 5G systems.
Nevertheless, difficulties faced in coming months along the project execution will be very fruitful to support SDOs into standardization document / solutions review, provide stakeholders (verticals / operator and vendors) a clear picture of solutions / technologies maturity level that will, and so, aligned to one of the objectives of 5G EVE, help 5G ecosystem players to update their commercial and so, business goals; and be instrumental towards the pervasive roll-out of 5G end-to-end networks in Europe.