5G Core Part 1 — Architecture Overview
Introduction
5G is certainly the loudest buzzword in the networking industry for the past few years. Many carriers announced their 5G networks in 2019 but these 5G deployments were mostly based on the 3GPP Release 15. The 3GPP Release 15 still missed out many important 5G’s feature and service specifications such as the new 5G Core (5GC), cell densification, and support of network latency down to 1ms that are planned for the 3GPP Releases 16 and 17 to be standardized in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
Many of the 5G deployments announced in 2019 were deployed using the Non-Standalone 3x Option with the legacy 4G’s Evolved Packet Core (EPC) as the mobile core network to terminate 4G’s eNodeBs and 5G’s gNBs (i.e., Next Generation 5G Radios). This kind of setup offers 1Gbps to 5Gbps downlink speed for the early 3GPP’s 5G enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMMB) service. The practical outdoor 5G downlink speed for a UE (e.g., User Equipment such as a 5G Smartphone) is expected to be in the range of 300Mbps vs. 10Mbps in 4G LTE now. Note that when carriers advertise that their 5G networks have 10Gbps or more throughput, they are referring to the peak data rate including control and management traffic shared by 100s of UEs within a cell site.
3GPP Releases 16 and 17 will be standardized in late 2020 and 2021 respectively to support new…
