Introducing Terrestrial Satellite Resource Orchestration Layer

Abstract

Satellite communications is an essential building block of 5G technology to ensure delivery of 5G promises such as ubiquitous connectivity, enhance mobile broadband (eMBB) and massive machine type communication (mMTC). Service providers require seamless connectivity between terrestrial and satellite system, considering the best transport options available according to bandwidth, latency, network conditions and other application-specific requirements. The interworking between terrestrial and satellite is well recognized and promoted in the standardization bodies like 3GPP and ETSI. Full integration foresees coexistence of satellite system, with the radio networks (core and access) as well as computational resources expanded from the core to the network edge. A suite of orchestration of heterogeneous resources is fundamental enabler to realize this vision. This paper focuses on the management and orchestration of heterogeneous resource integrated with MANO-like framework for rapid provisioning of network services. The proposed architecture provides a user-friendly single point of interaction for all stakeholders in the ecosystem, i.e. terrestrial and satellite operators as well as 5G vertical providers, where they can launch and manage end-to-end 5G services. The system allows easy integration of multiple applications (e.g. virtual 5G Core, virtual caching, etc.) as well as solutions provided by radio and satellite vendors (e.g. satellite gateway, small cells, etc.).