Design and Evaluation of a Service-Based Interface for the Control of 5G User Plane Functions

The transition from the dedicated Packet Forwarding Control Protocol (PFCP) to a Service-Based Interface (SBI) for the control of User Plane Functions (UPFs) in 5G Core Network presents a significant opportunity to enhance its flexibility, scalability, and interoperability. This work investigates the viability and efficiency of switching from PFCP to SBI for UPF control. We implement the interface within the Open5GCore toolkit to demonstrate its integration within a 5G environment and conduct a comprehensive evaluation comparing its efficiency and performance with the existing PFCP-based interface. The evaluation focuses on protocol efficiency and performance under various network loads. The evaluation results show that the new SBI control interface performs on par with or better than PFCP, especially in scenarios with increasing User Equipments and operations per second. This work demonstrates that a service-based interface for UPF control is a viable alternative to the existing PFCP-based interface.