Convergence of multiple access technologies is one of the key enablers in providing diverse set of services to the Fifth Generation (5G) users. Though 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G standard defines a common core supporting multiple Radio Access Technologies (RATs), Radio Access Network (RAN) level decisions are taken separately across individual RATs as the existing 5G architecture lacks a unified control and management framework for a multi-RAT network. A unified access network is likely to utilize RAN resources more efficiently and provide an improved performance. In order to achieve a unified Multi-RAT RAN, we supplement the existing 3GPP 5G RAN architecture with OpenFlow. We refer to the proposed architecture as 5G-Flow. The proposed architecture can be viewed as a step towards further evolution of mobile networks beyond 5G. With minimal changes in the 3GPP 5G RAN and none in the core network, we are able to realize a unified and integrated multi-access 5G-Flow RAN. We simplify the existing 5G RAN by replacing RAN nodes with OpenFlow switches and a software-defined controller. The proposed architecture also allows us to completely decouple User Equipment’s (UE’s) communication with Core Network (CN) from its communication with RAN enabling a UE to use any RAT to connect to any CN (say, use 5G New Radio access to connect to 4G CN, which is not possible in the 3GPP architecture) or to directly connect to Internet from RAN without going via the CN. We have developed an evaluation platform to compare the performance of our proposal with the standard 3GPP architecture. Results demonstrate significant gains in the network performance of 5G-Flow RAN over the existing 3GPP 5G network.

多接入技术的融合是为第五代 (5G) 用户提供多样化服务的关键推动因素之一。尽管第三代合作伙伴计划 (3GPP) 5G 标准定义了支持多种无线接入技术 (RAT) 的通用核心，但由于现有 5G 架构缺乏统一的控制和管理框架，因此在各个 RAT 之间分别做出无线接入网络 (RAN) 级别的决策。多 RAT 网络。统一接入网络可能更有效地利用 RAN 资源并提供改进的性能。为了实现统一的多 RAT RAN，我们用 OpenFlow 补充了现有的 3GPP 5G RAN 架构。我们将提议的架构称为 5G-Flow。所提出的架构可以被视为朝着 5G 以外的移动网络进一步演进迈出的一步。只需对 3GPP 5G RAN 进行最小的更改，并且核心网中没有更改，我们就能够实现统一集成的多接入 5G-Flow RAN。我们通过用 OpenFlow 交换机和软件定义的控制器替换 RAN 节点来简化现有的 5G RAN。所提出的架构还允许我们将用户设备 (UE) 与核心网络 (CN) 的通信与其与 RAN 的通信完全分离，使 UE 能够使用任何 RAT 连接到任何 CN（例如，使用 5G 新无线电接入连接到 4G CN，这在 3GPP 架构中是不可能的）或直接从 RAN 连接到 Internet 而无需通过 CN。我们开发了一个评估平台来比较我们的提案与标准 3GPP 架构的性能。