A Brief Survey and Implementation on Network-Level Intent Decomposition for Telecommunication Networks

With the rapid development of telecommunication networks, various service requirements and on-demand network configurations have been becoming increasingly complicated. Meanwhile, the number of network elements and configurable network parameters will be significantly huge. Network operators cannot effectively handle various coupling problems among these adjustable parameters. Therefore, intent-based network management is essential for addressing these couplings and dependencies. However, it is a significant challenge for network operators to analyze the supply relationships between network-level intents and these adjustable parameters. Network-level intent decomposition (NID) can be introduced to reduce manual operations to enhance the degree of automation; however, there is a lack of a survey and clear methodology for complex NID. In this article, in order to overcome long manual configuration cycles and inflexible policy scheduling challenges in network intelligent control, we clarify a novel concept of the NID and provide a precise classification of the NID framework. This article presents a comprehensive survey of the NID from both the design time and run time perspectives. The design time contains intent modeling, intent decomposition, and intent validation, and the run time is mainly oriented to intent optimization. We then present an implementation framework of the NID. Finally, we design an intelligent NID system for an energy-aware open radio access network and demonstrate its feasibility and effectiveness.