The 5G NORMA project was structured in seven work packages. WP2 established the principal use cases and requirements during the first part of the project, and analysed the socio-economic aspects during the second part of the project. WP3 addressed the design of a multi-service multi-tenancy architecture and derived a top-down system architecture. This work package further performed a detailed verification and evaluation of the final architecture. WP4 and WP5 focused on the development of the novel functions and components integrated with-in the 5G NORMA architecture. WP6 implemented three demonstrators and one online tool for the analysis of techno-economic aspects (
http://www.realwireless.eu/main.html(si apre in una nuova finestra)). The project’s dissemination and standardisation activities were monitored and coordinated through WP7. The project and innovation management was organised in WP1.
The first major milestone achieved by the project was the 5G NORMA architecture. The functional view of the overall 5G NORMA system architecture is depicted in the figure below. It shows the separation of network functions into four layers as well as the differ-entiation between intra-slice and inter-slice functions.
The second major milestone achieved was the verification and evaluation of the 5G NORMA architecture. A techno-economic analysis of the 5G NORMA architecture was performed with the purpose of evaluating the economic and social benefits of the service-specific architectural solutions, the flexible functional allocation, multi-tenancy support, and the joint optimization of access and core functionalities, taking specific account of the EU policy priorities. For the verification of the 5G NORMA architecture design, the abovementioned network roll-out in a central London study area has been emulated. The 5G NORMA evaluation framework has constantly been under review due to interactions with the 5G-PPP working groups regarding architecture design, KPIs, and spectrum topics.
The third major milestone achieved comprised the implemented demonstrators. 5G NORMA developed four demonstrators showing the following functionality:
- Network Slicing (covering both: Network Control and NFV Management and Orchestration),
- Security, and
- The 5G NORMA Business Cases.
To implement these demonstrators, the following technologies developed by the other WPs were brought to practice: SDM-C, SDM-O, NFV Management and Orchestration, security concepts and several wireless functions. Specifically, the developed demonstrators and online tool are:
- Demo 1: Native Multi-Service Architecture.
- Demo 2: Multi-slice Service-Aware Orchestration.
- Demo 3: Secured Multi-Tenant Virtual Network Resources Provisioning via V-AAA.
- Demo 4: Online Interactive 5G NORMA Business Case Evaluation Tool.
Furthermore, 5G NORMA has been very active to publicly show its results in various venues, such as at major journals, workshops, panels, as well as a three-day summer school organized in London with almost 130 attendees.