5G wireless network: MyNET and SONAC

Future 5G wireless networks will face new challenges, including increasing demand on network capacity to support a large number of devices running applications requiring high data rates and always-on connectivity; immensely diverse service requirements and characteristics; and supporting the emerging business models in the wireless network market requiring networks to be more open. New challenges drive new solutions and require different strategies in the network deployment, management, and operation of future 5G wireless networks compared to those of current wireless networks. One of the key objectives of future 5G wireless networks is to flexibly provide service-customized networks to a wide variety of services using the integrated cloud resource and wireless/wired network resources, which may be offered by multiple infrastructure providers and/or operators. In this article, we describe a novel wireless network architecture, MyNET, and one of the key enabling techniques called SONAC. In MyNET, basic logical functions are identified for both the control plane and the data plane. These basic functions include existing network functions, with some extensions/enhancements, as well as new network functions. SONAC selects and deploys a subset of these functions to provide customized network services.