E2E Analytics Framework for 5G Architecture

Data Analytics can be seen as a powerful tool which can be used by 5G system, to enable the transformation of the envisioned challenging 5G features into a reality. In current 5G architecture, some first steps have been performed in this direction, by introducing new functions in core and management domains that can either running analytics on collected communication-related data, or can enhance already supported network functions with statistics collection and prediction capabilities. However, possible enhancements on 5G architecture may be required, which strongly depend on the requirements as set by the vertical customer. Subsequently, the architecture needs to be tailored and flexible to deal with either network changes or service adaptations as requested by the vertical. This paper provides the current status of standardization activities and proposes an integrated analytics framework which can be used as key enabling technology for service-based architecture. This framework introduces new functional entities for application-level, data network and access related analytics to be integrated to the already existing analytics functionalities and examines their interactions in service-oriented manner. To this end, a particular implementation for application and RAN-centric analytics is showcased using a database in RAN for collecting and analyzing radio measurements to support the predictive radio resource management, which is beneficial for critical slices.