5G is a conduit for service innovation, and successfully negotiating the leap from the drawing board to commercialisation is the critical step for new use cases. Let’s investigate how you can take it. Read on.

When it comes to 5G (indeed, it’s true of almost any new generation of network technology) the talk we hear is inevitably centred on the end game. There’s always an over-riding focus on the new, attention-grabbing use cases that will (apparently) transform a customer’s experience and introduce lucrative new profit centres for the operator. But such chatter, at least initially, can be objectively seen as lying mainly in the domains of marketing literature and operational theory. That remains the case until the leap from theory through service validation to commercialisation has been made.

How that leap can be taken is the subject of a recent paper presented to the 2024 Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), Experimentation-as-a-Service for Validating 5G Use Cases in a Large-Scale 5G Platform, based on the iCORA platform – which stands for ‘Innovative, Cloud-native, Open, Resilient and Automated”.

We’ll look into its recommendations and conclusions in this blog.

No choice by to jump!

The importance of the leap stands to reason; theory and practice are two different beasts and if the latter fails to deliver on the promise of the former, the outcome for service innovation would be (at best) disappointment and at worst costly misplaced investment in technology that isn’t up to the job of delivering what’s needed.

Every operator faces this reality when launching 5G (and beyond) networks and services. So, there’s a question to be answered: how to bridge the gap or, what steps can the operator take to ensure the commercial success of the use cases it envisages offering? The answer proposed by the paper lies in the domain of testing. Simply put, it is manifested in the need for a 5G testing platform that has a similar scale and reliability as a commercial 5G, and which can be used as a “proving ground” for proposed next generation services. The platform can be used in tandem with an “Experimentation as a Service” testing framework to validate new use cases.

Why test?

Before we investigate the paper’s proposed testing environment, there’s a more basic question to answer. Why, when launching new use cases on a 5G network, is it so crucial to conduct this integration, function, and performance testing?

In essence, it’s to ensure that the network can support the newly proposed use cases effectively and reliably, and it’s worth looking in a little more detail at the three core aspects being tested.

1. Integration testing

The purpose of integration testing is to ensure that the operator’s proposed new use cases are able to integrate seamlessly with the network infrastructure and components. 5G networks tend towards complexity and involve multiple hardware and software components ranging from core elements to edge devices and beyond to applications. It’s possible that new use cases may require changes to these components or fine-tuning of the interactions between them and integration testing serves to ensure everything works together, without conflicts or failures that would give rise to issues like service disruptions or incompatibility.

2. Function testing

The aim of function testing is to ensure that use cases work as designed and are able to meet their specified requirements. This involves testing to ensure that use cases operate as expected under both normal and edge conditions. Given the sort of innovative cases proposed for 5G (think autonomous vehicles or remote surgery) the consequences of any functional flaws or errors might be significant and function testing is designed to identify and correct issues related to application logic, user interface, and underlying service.

3. Performance testing

Performance testing seeks to assess the 5G network’s ability to handle the anticipated load, latency, throughput, and scalability requirements presented by the use case. Marketing literature promises that 5G will deliver high data rates, low latency, and high device density. Performance testing is where the rubber meets the road, ensuring that the network can meet these promises under the expected conditions. There are plenty of use case examples that underline why it’s critical. For example, augmented reality or industrial automation use cases tend to require ultra-low latency so it’s important to verify that the network can maintain this even under varying conditions and load. High-definition video streaming or massive IoT use cases tend, conversely, to need high data throughput so, similarly, testing is needed to ensure that the network can handle such demands without degradation. In the iCORA project, active monitoring was chosen as the primary method for performance testing, based on resource availability and privacy considerations. 

The bottom line here is simple enough. Testing ensures that a use case will function as required in a live environment.  It will guarantee a consistent and high-quality experience for end users. It will identify and mitigate potential network issues before they impact both customers and operations. Without testing, there’s no way to ensure that new use cases make their intended impact. As such, it’s not unreasonable to think that testing is the key to unlocking new revenue streams.

The component parts: Platform

The paper introduces a two-part testing environment, the first component of which is the testing platform, iCORA. iCORA (innovative, Cloud-native, Open, Robust, and Automated), was built by the paper’s authors specifically to  test and validate new technologies, services, and use cases co-created within a variety of different verticals.

It’s designed to operate in a near-production environment and generates insights for 5G use cases based on how they meet the necessary requirements related to both scale and the performance. iCORA is composed of both near-commercial and open source 5G network components and can be deployed to address the various operational demands of new use cases, e.g., performance, scalability, openness, etc.

The urgent need for such a testing environment is underlined by the speed with which 5G SA is progressing, with commercial services entering the market. This makes it critical to not only create but also to validate use cases for both the mobile operators and vertical customers.

Experimentation as a Service

In broad terms, tests on the platform can be divided into three categories:

• Integration – testing for 5G operators to ensure the operations and offering of 5G and B5G services.
• Performance – testing for use cases, and continuous validation of the service and slice KPIs.
• Innovation – testing new features/technology for solution providers to validate their solutions in a close-to-operation environment.

These testing requirements, the paper proposes, can best be met through what it calls an Experimentation-as-a-Service (EaaS) framework, which is purposed to organise and execute the necessary steps in a holistic and scalable way.

The Experimentation as a Service (EaaS) framework addresses the three key aspects of testing that we outlined earlier in this blog; integration, functional, and performance (as well as a fourth, security, which we’re not addressing here).

In essence, EaaS generates synthetic traffic related to a proposed use case and then simulates Containerised Network Functions to provide an agile test platform that can perform the necessary validations for the desired functional and logical components required by the service.

The underlying enabling component used is Evolver from Emblasoft, a service assurance, validation, testing and active monitoring solution for any mobile network services (both 5G and legacy). Evolver provides automated testing and monitoring for both control and user plane applications in 5G networks, validating both services and quality assurance while supporting centralised control of all network testing and active monitoring programmes.

EaaS is designed to be open and used by a range of stakeholders including solution providers, service providers, vertical use cases owners, and application developers. Given the diversity of networks and environments that can be created by iCORA, users can leverage EaaS’ (and Evolver’s) flexibility to meet their specific testing requirements.

Summary

As 5G SA networks proliferate and the importance of new service launches magnifies, addressing the testing question should, for reasons that both the paper and this blog make clear, become a priority. If you’d like to discuss your own testing requirements in more detail, please click the link below and we’d be happy to talk further. If you’d like to read the full paper discussed in this article, you can find it here.

About Emblasoft

Emblasoft is a global provider of Service Enablement, Active Monitoring, Load and Functional Test solutions for, 5G, VoLTE, 4G, 3G and IMS infrastructure. With Emblasoft’s solutions, operators and equipment vendors can obtain and deliver new products and services that push the boundaries of technology.

You can learn more about Telenor and iCORA, here:

https://www.telenor.com/insights/creating-the-future/icora-experimental-platform/