Open5GCore – The Next Mobile Core Network Testbed Platform
The Fraunhofer FOKUS Open5GCore toolkit is a worldwide first practical implementation of the 3GPP 5G core network. It mirrors in a prototype form the 3GPP Release 15 for the core network functionality and its integration with 5G New Radio (Standalone and Non-Standalone).
The Open5GCore aims at providing support and speeding-up research, by facilitating know-how transfer from Fraunhofer FOKUS towards partners. It serves as a consistent basis for 5G testbed deployments for trials and pilots as well as for the further development of new standard oriented functional features.
Open5GCore implements the new 5G components as standalone, independent of the previous 4G EPC functionality. Through this, Open5GCore enables a fast and targeted 5G innovation, hands-on fast implementation and realistic evaluation and demonstration of new concepts and use case opportunities.
Open5GCore represents a first 5G core network implementation addressing the needs of 5G testbeds for FOKUS and for partner activities. Open5GCore Rel. 4 is including a large level of newly implemented functions developed on top of an accelerated software platform:
- Integration with 5G New Radio: NSA [S1-MME, S1-U] and SA [N1, N2, N3]
- Implementing control-user plane split – PFCP [N4]
- First implementation of Service-Based Architecture Features [HTTP/2, OpenAPI, REST]
- Data path diversity supporting local offloading and backhaul control
- Maintaining backwards compatibility with LTE and NB-IoT [IDD and NIDD]
Open5GCore Rel. 4 integrates with 5G New Radio Stand-Alone (SA) and Non-Stand-Alone (NSA) prototypes and off-the-shelf LTE access networks enabling immediate demonstration of different features and applications and supporting the current need to have a genuine 5G Core Network in addition to the evolved EPC one.
Open5GCore runs on top of common hardware platforms and can be deployed with containers or virtual machines on top of a large number of virtualization environments. The required hardware for a testbed setup, highly depends on the expected capacity. Open5GCore scales from Raspberry PI to a complete rack of servers.
Open5GCore is highly customizable, enabling the deployment of instances addressing the needs of the specific use cases. The source code license option extends the offer with ultimate flexibility for easy customization and prototype developments.
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