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 cnSGW-C 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 cnSGW-C 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 the overall user experience.

  • Provides 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 Functions

    • Integrates 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)

    • Supports logical network functions (data)

  • Converged User Plane Functions

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

    • Provides simultaneous support for N4 and Sxa interfaces

    • Terminates multiple control planes in a single deployment