Enhancing 5G RAN Agility: Cloud-Native Architectures For Rapid Deployment And Maintenance

The rapid advancement of telecommunications technology and the rise of 5G Radio Access Network (RAN) demand an agile and adaptive framework capable of addressing the increasing need for swift deployment and efficient maintenance. Traditional RAN architectures, often constrained by rigid hardware-based implementations, fall short of meeting these modern requirements. This paper explores the transformative potential of integrating cloud-native architectures within the 5G RAN ecosystem to significantly enhance its flexibility, scalability, and operational efficiency. We propose a comprehensive cloud-native 5G RAN architecture that leverages key cloud-native principles such as containerization, microservices, and orchestration technologies to support faster deployment, automated maintenance, and dynamic scaling of network resources. By encapsulating network functions into lightweight, portable containers, and decomposing them into independent microservices, our architecture ensures modularity and facilitates continuous integration and deployment processes. The utilization of orchestration tools like Kubernetes automates the management and operation of these containerized applications, ensuring high availability and scalability. Through detailed analysis and illustrative use cases, we demonstrate how cloud-native 5G RAN can accommodate the evolving demands of next-generation telecommunications, including the ability to dynamically allocate and scale resources in real-time. Our findings highlight the potential of this novel approach to simplify network deployment and maintenance while improving the overall agility and resilience of 5G RAN infrastructures. As the telecommunications industry progresses towards 6G and beyond, the insights from this research offer a foundational blueprint for future network evolution.