Evaluation and validation of connected mobility in real open systems beyond 5GS

Project Information

ENVELOPE

Grant agreement ID: 101139048

DOI

10.3030/101139048

EC signature date 8 December 2023

Start date 1 January 2024

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 15 700 878,01

EU contribution

€ 13 499 953,75

Coordinated by

EREVNITIKO PANEPISTIMIAKO INSTITOUTO SYSTIMATON EPIKOINONION KAI YPOLOGISTON
Greece

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENVELOPE (Evaluation and validation of connected mobility in real open systems beyond 5GS)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

ENVELOPE aims to advance and open up the reference 5G advanced architecture and transform it into a vertical-oriented one. It proposes a novel open and easy-to-use 5G-advanced architecture to enable a tighter integration of the network and the service information domains by
• exposing network capabilities to verticals,
• providing vertical-information to the network; and
• enabling verticals to dynamically request and modify key network aspects,
all performed in an open, transparent and easy-to-use, semi-automated way.
ENVELOPE will build APIs that act as an intermediate abstraction layer that translate the complicated 5GS interfaces and services into easy to consume services accessible by the vertical domain. The experimentation framework and the main innovations developed in the project are: MEC with service continuity support, zero-touch management, multi-connectivity and predictive QoS.
It will deliver 3 large scale Beyond 5G (B5G) trial sites in Italy, Netherlands and Greece supporting novel vertical services, with advanced exposure capabilities and new functionalities tailored to the services’ needs. Although focused on the Connected and Automation Mobility (CAM) vertical, the developments resulting from the use cases (UC) will be reusable by any vertical. The ENVELOPE architecture will serve as an envelope that can cover, accommodate and support any type of vertical services. The applicability of ENVELOPE will be demonstrated and validated via the project CAM UCs and via several 3rd parties that will have the opportunity to conduct funded research and test their innovative solutions over ENVELOPE.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the first half of its lifetime the project set a solid ground for delivering a series of advances promoting the interaction between innovative CAM services and the 5G network. Namely:
• Delivered a refined specification of six (6) innovative CAM services.
• Employed these services as a driving force for the realistic identification of system requirements.
• Delivered a modular architecture enabling CAM services to consume advanced network support/features (i.e. the ENVELOPE Enablers) through corresponding interfaces (i.e. the ENVELOPE APIs) .
• Developed ENVELOPE Enablers and APIs for: edge computing operations, device location, Quality on Demand (QoD), Performance Metrics, predictive QoS, and Access Traffic Steering-Switching-Splitting (ATSSS) Multi-connectivity.
• Developed an Experimentation-as-a-Service module that enables experimenters to deploy and test the interaction of their CAM services with the ENVELOPE Enablers/APIs.
• Realized the ENVELOPE experimentation environment in three complementary trial sites in Italy, the Netherlands and Greece.
• Launched Open Call #1
• It identified a series of Key Exploitable Results stemming from the technological propositions of the project and conducted a Market Analysis for each of them.
• It made 15 contributions to SDOs such as 3GPP and ETSI.
• Published seven (7) conference papers, one (1) book chapter and contributed to two (2) white papers.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The ENVELOPE project advanced and opened up the reference 5G-Advanced architecture, transform it into a CAM-oriented one. The key advances beyond the state of the art include:

• Vertical-specific open implementations for network exposure and programmability: the project identified, designed and produced open implementations for a series of technical enablers and corresponding APIs specifically tailored for the automotive/CAM vertical. This is a contribution beyond the vertical-agnostic, and in most cases lacking open implementations, state of the art approaches e.g. CAMARA, SEAL. The enablers and APIs focused on the following areas: Edge computing operations, Device location, Quality on Demand (QoD), Performance Metrics, Predictive QoS, Access Traffic Steering-Switching-Splitting (ATSSS) Multi-connectivity.
• End-to-end performance monitoring: ENVELOPE enables the delivery of monitored end to end performance metric values, such as UE throughput or end-to-end latency, to the CAM vertical service. A Performance Metrics API has been developed towards this end, allowing CAM services to receive the desired information. Going beyond state of the art approaches, the solution extends the scope of the supported metrics, to include the full end to end path between the UE and the Application Server i.e. include the service layer.
• QoS prediction: beyond monitoring information, the ENVELOPE project has further developed the 3GPP-compliant mechanisms for the support for predictive QoS notifications, enabling CAM services to receive notifications about expected degradations of the delivered QoS. Through the exposure of a Predictive QoS northbound interface, the solution allows CAM services to subscribe to such notifications from the network or to follow a request response model. Going beyond state of the art approaches, the solution: (i) extends the scope of the supported metrics, allowing the CAM service to receive notifications about the end-to-end, service level performance predictions; and (ii) allows notifications to be scoped to a specific UE or any UE.
• Reconfigurable multi-connectivity with selective traffic duplication: ENVELOPE has designed and implemented an ATSSS-like multi-connectivity solution that enables UE/terminal devices to take advantage of the potential co-existence of 3GPP and non-3GPP access networks. The solution extends the current state of the art by: (i) enabling selective traffic duplication, instead of the current binary solution i.e. either full or no duplication across the available networks; (ii) allowing the vertical service to adjust/re-configure traffic duplication according to its needs and conditions; and (iii) offering an MPQUIC transport solution, beyond typical MPTCP implementations.