End-to-End Data Analytics Framework for 5G Architecture

Data Analytics can be seen as a powerful tool for the fifth generation (5G) communication system, to enable the transformation of the envisioned challenging 5G features into a reality. In the current 5G architecture, some first features towards this direction have been adopted, by introducing new functions in core and management domains that can either run analytics on collected communication-related data, or can enhance already supported network functions with statistics collection and prediction capabilities. However, possible further enhancements on 5G architecture may be required, which strongly depend on the requirements as set by vertical customers and the network capabilities as offered by the operator. In addition, the architecture needs to be flexible in order to deal with network changes and service adaptations as requested by verticals. This article explicitly describes the requirements for deploying data analytics in 5G system and subsequently presents the current status of standardization activities. The main contribution of this article is the investigation and design of an integrated data analytics framework as key enabling technology for servicebased architectures (SBAs). 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. Finally, to demonstrate predictive radio resource management, we showcase a particular implementation for application and radio access network analytics, based on a novel database for collecting and analyzing radio measurements.