CleanG—Improving the Architecture and Protocols for Future Cellular Networks With NFV

Abstract

With the rapid increase in the number of users and changing pattern of network usage, cellular networks will continue to be challenged meeting bandwidth and latency requirements. A significant contributor to latency and overhead is cellular network’s complex control-plane. We propose CleanG, a new packet core architecture and significantly more efficient control-plane protocol, that exploits the capabilities of modern-day Network Function Virtualization (NFV) platforms. CleanG is a single component NFV-based architecture. With the elastic scalability offered by NFV, the data and control sub-components of the core can scale, adapting to workload demand. CleanG eliminates the use of GTP tunnels for data packets and the associated complex protocol for coordination across multiple, distributed components for setting up and managing them. We carefully examine the use of each protocol message exchange (and the component fields of those messages) in developing a substantially simplified protocol, while retaining similar essential functionality for security, mobility, and air-interface resource management. We have implemented CleanG on the OpenNetVM platform and perform an apples-to-apples comparison with the existing 3GPP LTE architecture and an architecture that separates the control and user plane (the CUPS-based architecture like the 5G architecture). Measurements on our testbed show that CleanG substantially reduces both control and data plane latency, and significantly increases system capacity.