A private 5G system has been deployed at the EXTREME Testbed of Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya (CTTC). This system, unfolded by Ericsson and CTTC’s Service as networkS (SAS) research unit, constitutes a powerful platform for research, experimentation and validation of new use cases and architectures envisioned in the evolution from 5G to 6G.
Since 2023, CTTC and Ericsson are collaborating towards the primary objective of developing new technologies for empowering communication service providers (CSPs) to seamlessly enhance and scale their private network capabilities.
The solution provided includes a simple portable private 5G system allowing to easily create a private network for supporting high-performance demanding novel use cases, and a centralized 5G Control Plane, a function of Ericsson’s dual-mode 5G core solution for private 5G, deployed at 5TONIC and interconnected with CTTC lab. The private network side of the solution deployed consists of 5G radio equipment, baseband unit, and local User Plane Function implemented by Ericsson Local Packet Gateway to enable the co-location of application servers running the workloads of stringent vertical applications, thus ensuring that the required high throughput and reduced latencies are delivered.
As part of this collaboration, CTTC and Ericsson research on the optimization of private 5G towards energy efficiency and flexible management of radio resources along two main threads:
- The potential of open APIs to expose the internal operation and behaviour of the network through NEF (Network Exposure Function) APIs
- The construction of an NDT (Network Digital Twin) that enables extensive pre-deployment testing, increased network performance observability and data-driven continuous optimization.
The combination of Network APIs with NDT functionalities enables a plethora of valuable services for network operators, such as remote analysis, KPI performance validation and estimation, or suggesting RAN (Radio Access Network) configurations based on particular traffic models. As a result, the foreseen evolution of the 5G system encompasses resource flexibility, energy efficiency, sustainability, zero-touch automation, and network resiliency capabilities that enable its adaptation to the dynamic network and vertical service working conditions.
This collaboration between CTTC and Ericsson occurs within the framework of 6G BLUR and 6G DAWN UNICO I+D projects, both supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Digital Transformation and NextGeneration EU.
Josep Mangues-Bafalluy, Head of the Services as networkS (SaS) research unit, CTTC, and co-Principal Investigator, 6G-BLUR and 6G DAWN projects: “We are really excited about the experimentation possibilities that Ericsson’s Private 5G solution offers. Through this collaboration, we are jointly advancing our research on automated resource- and energy-efficient non-public networks while setting the pace on current industry trends on open mobile network APIs and network digital twins.”
Manuel Lorenzo, Head of Technology and Innovation at Ericsson Spain,: “Thanks to the collaboration with CTTC, new paradigms that could become essential breakthroughs in the journey to 6G such as Network Digital Twins and innovative Network Exposure APIs are, on a daily basis, jointly looked into, implemented and validated at CTTC lab over Ericsson’s Private 5G platform.”
