Metro Ethernet Forum has published a white-paper on the Slicing for Shared 5G Fronthaul and Backhaul among NTT and other partners

Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) has published a white-paper that describes the architecture and use cases of network slicing for shared 5G fronthaul and backhaul. The architecture and use cases in the white-paper have been developed by NTT and its main collaborators, and the whitepaper will be posted on MEF's public web site.

Background

NTT Information Network Laboratory Group has developed 5G xHaul*1 sharing and its orchestration architecture as shown in "5G xHaul Sharing Slices with LSO Orchestration," which was awarded the "Network Slicing Implementation 2019 Award" at the Sixth Annual MEF 3.0 Proof of Concept Showcase at MEF19 [1].

Since receiving the award at MEF19, the slicing for shared 5G xHaul has drawn much more attention in the industry. NTT and its main collaborators in the whitepaper project have continued to study architecture and use cases in MEF.

Overview

This whitepaper describes an inter-operator xHaul architecture and use cases, which comprises shared xHaul connectivity and network services, and its control and management. This architecture and use cases will help to enable shared xHaul and its slicing to be implemented.

We will continue studying operator commonly shared xHaul requirements, network architecture, and specifications in MEF LSO^*2 and other standards. We also further deploy our proposed architecture with slicing and sharing of xHaul transport while expanding our partners.