Subnetworks: A Novel Architectural Paradigm for 6G

The anticipated collaborative use cases in 6G come with extreme requirements in latency and throughput. At the same time, network densification is expected to continue, thus making those more stringent requirements tougher to satisfy. To accommodate this, we propose a novel architecture for subnetworks (SNs), a paradigm shift compared to the more centralized cellular systems today. These SNs are formed among user equipments (UEs) with aid of a new UE role, the Management Node (MgtN), which is also introduced. As a result, a novel SN architecture is presented, where the user and control planes of the UEs and the MgtN are described. With SNs, the functionalities are distributed among the different nodes in the SN. Additionally, new processes are defined to maintain network connectivity within the SN in the form of the SN tunneling (SN-TP) and routing (SN-RP) protocols. The new architecture is designed with the aim of enabling a higher degree of independence of the SN in a network of networks.