Thought to write on 5G again - Allusive or Ellusive?

Thought to write on 5G again, as 5G is still elusive in talk and discussion. 5G is a re-imagination, paradigm shifts and new vision to accommodate certain advancements on radio and core network technologies, like massive MIMO, SDN/NFV, VNF/Cloud and MEC. 5G is also about upcoming use cases and capability & flexibility provided for them like IOT, Network Slicing or Application defined networking.

By and large it’s an end-to-end overhauling with new instruments to existing networks, which may be of concern for many reason, that need a transformational approach. As VNF and Cloud are most obvious tools to take up the necessary load of new functionality, MEC at the RAN level will be pivotal to discriminate the service logics and catalyze the application specific requirements fulfillment.

The transformation is going to shape-in with the shift in architectural paradigms to more hybrid or heterogeneous approaches and also leveraging the virtualization to accommodate variety of applications and use cases like for massive IOT, public safety, HD  video, mission critical i.e. latency sensitive applications.

Mobile edge computing abbreviated as MEC is about the cloud at edge or may be related to new term called as fog computing which is about putting many of RAN specific functionalities on virtual systems which are adaptive to load and computational requirements. MEC will help to provide right orchestration for VNF kind of architecture need for End to End networking, in term of network operation and performance optimization. MEC is best for the uses cases like for content management networks, latency sensitive applications, massive access management etc.

Virtualization is the kingpin in whole 5G conception as the required flexibility of the systems and network can be provided through it and that help to accommodate the application specific configuration with the term that provide end to end re-construction i.e. it is all about network slicing. Network slicing can also be envisaged as application defined networking that is about ad-hoc re-deployment or re-configuring network in line to the specific application requirements.  As per the 5G specification, this re-deployment time is not in days but in minutes and saying precisely it is 90 minutes only.