WINS 5G

This Section presents the Wireless Network Slicing Functionality for 5G (WINS_5G). WINS_5G will extend 5GINFIRE capabilities by adding to the 5GINFIRE ecosystem the capability to use radio slicing and virtualization with a new facility located at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). WINS_5G also will bring to 5GINFIRE the opportunity to integrate with FUTEBOL project [20]  and enable new experimentation use cases.

WINS_5G will add the capability to instantiate new NFV EVIs (i) to the radio access network supported by the radio slicing and virtualisation tool called Hypervisor for Software Defined Radios (HyDRA), developed by Trinity College Dublin researchers, (ii) which will be supported by the FUTEBOL Control Framework to support monitoring NFV experimentation scenarios in wireless, packet and optical networks. HyDRA as a VNF supported by Open Source MANO (OSM) will be available not only in the Iris Testbed, but also in other 5GINFIRE testbeds equipped with Universal Software Radio Peripherals (USRPs) N210s. These elements will enhance the 5GINFIRE ecosystem by offering the opportunity for experimenters to test and evaluate advanced 5G use case scenarios, such as massive eHealth communications in the Internet-of-Things, high-definition multimedia services in mobile broadband, and ultra-low latency communications for industry automation. WINS_5G is well aligned with the 5GINFIRE vision for 5G and general enough to support different Experimental Vertical Instances (EVIs).

WINS_5G overview

A high-level overview of WINS_5G architecture is depicted in Figure 20. The physical layer, at the bottom, represents the tangible resources including servers, switches, USRPSs, and so forth, at the Iris testbed. The virtualisation layer in the middle is supported by FUTEBOL Control Framework technologies including the Container Orchestration and Provisioning Architecture (COPA). These interact with LinuX Containers (LXC), GNU Radio images, and HyDRA to support radio slicing, exposing the functionality of physical resources to applications and across different 5G verticals. The vertical resource layer at the top, supported by the OSM MANO software stack, will interact with the physical and virtualisation layers to instantiate EVIs.