A Novel Radio Access Network Converged 6G Mobile Core Network Architecture

Abstract

Abstract

With the 5G era, new emerging communication paradigms, such as mobile cloud computing and network virtualization, have been introduced into mobile networks. However, the current mobile core network architecture still has several challenges with flexibility, efficiency, and scalability. We first set the design principles in order to make the 6G mobile core network more efficient and scalable. Based on the design principles, we propose a novel radio access network converged mobile core network architecture toward 6G. In the proposed architecture, the radio access network and the core networks are converged, and the concept of virtual user equipment is introduced as the dedicated control plane function for each user equipment based on the design principles for an efficient and scalable network. The proposed architecture can improve the capacity and performance of the current mobile core network with architectural enhancements. These include service-based procedures between the radio access network and core network, unified state management through the virtual user equipment, streamlining of session management, and distributed mobility management to improve capacity and performance of the current mobile core network.