Collaborative Cloud - Edge: A Declarative API orchestration model for the NextGen 5G Core

As the edge computing era matures, it encompasses a broader range of applications that will be able to opportunistically use both the edge and the cloud mainly determined by the location constraints or the mission-critical reasons. Moreover, the convergence of verticals with the next generation mobile network will lead to an imminent edge-cloud collaboration that needs to be carefully addressed by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). This paper proposes a novel approach to orchestrate the next-generation 5G core running as Cloud-Native Network Functions (CNFs) closer to the edge network while offloading the computation power required to ensure on-demand processing to a central cloud infrastructure. In this manner, full service isolation and network segmentation can be achieved independently from the geographical region with a high degree of scalability. Our main objective is to automate the CNFs provisioning in a declarative API-style in order to easily manage the deployment of applications and services across multiple clusters. Therefore, in our setup we considered crucial to assess the benefits of running the 5G Service-Based Architecture (SBA) in the cloud with multi-tenancy capabilities and evaluate the performance in terms of latency, while keeping the network control at the edge.