Project RELIANCE

Abstract

The capability to stretch service provisioning across multiple technical and administrative domains is considered a crucial factor to maximize the addressable markets. To meet the specific requirements of verticals, 5G systems have to be highly scalable and customizable, providing at the same time high reliability levels, regardless of the heterogeneous underlying infrastructures.

RELIANCE extends the 5G network architecture with new functionalities needed for multi-service and multi-domain management, with the related abstractions, interfaces, and mechanisms to support needed resilience, security, and scalability. In particular, RELIANCE develops the concept of federated network slicing to compose end-to-end services that span across different technical and administrative domains. A key innovation of the project is the highly scalable and robust slice choreography plane that enables the offering of vertical-tailored multi-domain slices “as-a-Service”, ensuring the required scalability, security, and resilience features. It facilitates the mapping of service requirements from the verticals with their predicted traffic demands into dedicated networking and cloud resources through automated multiparty negotiation.

Scalable slice federation is complemented with protocols for deployment and runtime adaptation of resilience and security mechanisms over heterogeneous infrastructures, so to enable a unified reliability framework. The architectural work of the project is driven by the diverse needs and requirements stemming from vertical industries (e.g., automotive, industry 4.0, enhanced multimedia broadband, train control & management, and public protection & disaster relief). The RELIANCE framework will be implemented and validated on selected use-cases through proof-of-concepts, aiming at demonstrating the envisioned benefits of the RELIANCE framework.