Prototyping new concepts beyond 4G - The Fraunhofer Open5GCore

The 5th Generation of mobile networks (5G) is expected to be rolled out by 2020. New and revolutionary applications are already being envisioned, real-time control of machines, the Tactile Internet for wireless, Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things and self-driving cars, among others. To make this possible important enhancements and improvements in today's existing telecommunication technologies form an end-to-end perspective are required. Early testing and fast prototyping of new approaches and solutions will help to shape the evolving technologies. One of the technical enablers for 5G are two concepts based on the softwarisation and virtualisation of the core network, known as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation, NFV. Fraunhofer FOKUS has set up the Open5GCore testing environment to start shaping, together with its partners, the nascent 5G technologies by addressing these topics together with other relevant technological developments. After a short motivation, the architecture of the open5GCore is presented, followed by a functional description of supported features.