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Creating a single network solution for any smart city use case

The Smart networks for smart cities Catalyst project features an AI driven analytics application that determines parking patterns in the City of Dublin, Ohio’s historic district.

Annie Turner
17 Aug 2020
Creating a single network solution for any smart city use case

Creating a single network solution for any smart city use case

Smart cities need an agile communications infrastructure that has minimal operational complexity so that new services can be integrated fast. This Catalyst proof of concept project demonstrates 5G use cases with autonomous networking through a digital transformation platform. The platform is enabled by an open architecture with TM Forum APIs alongside a broad ecosystem of partners.

The Smart networks for smart cities Catalyst project features an analytics application that is driven by AI and determines parking patterns in the City of Dublin, Ohio’s historic district. The video devices are hosted in parking lots and have edge network capabilities that enable the 5G application. On top of the 5G infrastructure, is an open, pre-integrated and unified operating system, deployed to create network slices automatically and assure service should there be any failures. The team presented the solution at the TM Forum Catalyst Digital Showcase on July 21.

A variety of companies are behind the project, their expertise spanning infrastructure, operations and applications:

  • DGIT supplies the business support system (BSS) which uses catalog driven services to enable any product requests from customers.

  • Fujitsu provides the IoT framework, which hosts: the product applications; the orchestration, which is responsible for end-to-end service activation; and the controllers for wireless, transport and virtual network resource allocation.

  • Federos provides the closed loop automation for service assurance.

  • Quortus is responsible for wireless core, which manages the wireless profiles and connectivity.

  • Microsoft provides the video analytics application with its Azure Edge, which supports the end-user visualization use case.


Different service needs


The team chose a video surveillance use case (shown in graphic below) that has strict service needs for bandwidth, latency and reliability. It activates network service across wireless, wireline and virtual domains with automated (autonomous) control for self-healing. The Catalyst’s approach is to match and allocate the network resources in each domain to provide and maintain service level agreements (SLAs).
Kai Mao, Distinguished Strategic Solutions Planner at Fujitsu Network Communications, explains, “We’re looking at multi-domain service – across the radio access network (RAN), packet optical transport (POTP) and the data center virtualized network function (VNF) resources – that is reliable from end to end. If the radio pole is hit by lightning and the camera link disabled, then the network can automatically recover by adjusting the coverage from neighboring radios and using the corresponding network and resource adjustments, even when they are connected to a different network edge site.
“Normally, an event affecting a service like this would require manual intervention as it requires rerouting the entire service link over multiple resource domains. Traditional, intra-domain recovery mechanisms cannot restore the full service. In the Catalyst demonstration, the fault is automatically detected and the service is restored as a new, diverse end-to-end connection which is built autonomously.”

Closed loop automation


The Catalyst achieves this using closed loop automation for the entire process across the three domains. The project leverages and will contribute to the ongoing work in TM Forum’s Autonomous Networks Project. The project’s goal is to define fully automated, innovative network and ICT services for vertical industries and their customers that are “zero wait, zero touch and zero trouble”.

Autonomous networks need a simplified network architecture, autonomous domains, and automated intelligent business and network operations for the closed loop control of digital business. On the technology and operational side, TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture is used to simplify the orchestration platform and aid autonomous control throughout. To address the business and monetization aspects of the ecosystem, the team applied the Forum’s Ecosystem Business Concepts & Principles.

The project also makes extensive use of TM Forum Open APIs to perform discovery of service models from which to create product offers, event notifications between systems, closed loop controls and autonomous, service level healing across domains. The team expects to contribute and extend the APIs’ applicability to 5G’s new capabilities, such as ultra-reliability, low latency, and high availability for wired and wireless services and resources.

Multi-domain service control


The multi-domain aspect of service control – activate, monitor and manage – combines a number of industry standards. TM Forum’s Open APIs to manage services, but at the resource level, 3GPP’s interfaces are used for the wireless core, the O-RAN Alliance’s for the radio side and ETSI’s MANO for the virtual functions.

The diagram of the architecture used for this Catalyst illustrates how these elements work together to support autonomous management for the critical video surveillance use case.

Looking to the future


Fujitsu’s IoT framework is flexible, so that other applications can be added to support use cases from other industries, such as utilities, emergency services, transportation and manufacturing. The ecosystem framework can create new products to configure the services with the corresponding resources to match the new SLAs. This allows the network to automatically satisfy and autonomously maintain the service, avoiding manual intervention and unnecessary truck rolls.
By supporting new 5G use cases, cities can provide better services for citizens, more economic growth and new revenue opportunities for communications service providers (CSPs) and their ecosystem partners.

You can watch a short video about the Catalyst below:


Project panel discussion and demo:
Watch the Catalyst team showcase their project

Note: Registration for Digital Transformation World Series is required.