5G Network Enhancements to Support Ambient IoT Devices

With the advent of 5G networks and the enablement of massive machine type communications (mMTC), a plethora of use cases envisioned in vertical sectors, being manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, power industry, and many more, has been realized. The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices has revolutionized the way these sectors operate, unleashing the possibility for new disruptive use cases and applications. As the variety of use cases dependent on sensors expands, some new requirements demand for battery-less or limited-capacity IoT devices which are harvesting energy from their environment, broadly recognized as Ambient IoT (AIoT) devices. The existing 5G network architecture is not inherently supporting AIoT devices, and some further enhancements are requested to satisfy the peculiarities such kind of devices exhibit in terms of communication. This paper proposes new functions and methods which enable the 5G network to onboard AIoT devices and support their respective use cases. More precisely, we propose a new Network Function (NF) in the 5G Core Network (CN) Service Based Architecture (SBA), dedicated for managing the communication of AIoT devices with their corresponding application servers, as well as details on the appropriate message flows to support this kind of communication. In addition, we propose novel procedures and methods, deemed necessary for securing the AIoT messages transferred end-to-end. Finally, this paper contributes to existing research in the field by envisioning the necessary network signaling messages, which allow for translation of AIoT transmission requirements into appropriate energy-transfer actions applied by the 5G network components, in an attempt to energize such kind of devices.