Feature Description

SMF supports integrity protection of user data packets exchanged between UE and gNB. Though the 3GPP specification mandates the Integrity Protection feature on both the UE and the gNB, this feature remains optional to use due to the overhead of the packet size.

SMF learns the integrity protection status from UDM and decides whether to enforce the User Plane Integrity Protection at gNB. In the absence of status information from UDM, the SMF uses its local configuration data.

SMF decides the maximum integrity data rate by comparing the data rate values that were requested by UE and configured locally on SMF. If there is no local configuration for data rates, then the UE requested data rates are applied.

For example, if the UE indicates 64 kbps as its maximum data rate for integrity protected traffic, then the network only turns on integrity protection for UP connections where the data rates are not expected to exceed the 64 kbps.