Converged Core Overview

The converged core solution provides an advanced, cloud native, converged control plane with the capability to support 4G and 5G devices, and use cases.

Important

This release supports only the cloud-native integrated S-GW and SMF instance with S5C and cnSGWc functionalities.

The converged core solution removes the operational complexity by providing a unified core network to handle all types of subscribers and use cases.

The operator has the following benefits:

  • Improves the overall network efficiency by reducing signaling between cnSGWc and SMF while handling a 4G subscriber or handoff from 5G to 4G coverage area.

  • Reduces latency introduced due to the extra hop SGW-U for a subscriber in 4G coverage area by collapsing the data path in the Converged UPF, thus improving overall user experience.

  • Ability to use a unified subscriber policy and billing infrastructure using SBA interfaces for 4G and 5G devices.

The solution supports the following converged control plane and user plane functions:

  • Converged Control Plane Function:

    • Integrated S-GW and SMF network functions as a single deployment, under a single Kubernetes namespace, to support 4G and 5G devices from E-UTRAN/NR (converged core gateway)

    • Support for logical network functions (data only)

  • Converged User Plane Function:

    • Integrated UPF and SGW-U functionalities as a single network function

    • Simultaneous support for N4 and Sxa interfaces

    • Terminate multiple control planes in a single deployment