5G核心网MEC和UPF研究与实践

随着5G时代的到来，为满足AR/VR、无人驾驶等新业务下高带宽、低时延的需求，如何设计新型核心网已成为急需解决的问题。本文首先分析了 5G 网络中的新需求对现有通信网络的挑战，从而说明5G 核心网研究的必要性。其次，本文介绍了5G网络中关键技术MEC的基本功能和系统构架。UPF作为连接5G核心网和MEC的纽带，本文重点介绍了其基本定义，接口设计和相应的数据转发流程。最后，本文介绍了5G网络在智慧医疗和手游两个方面的应用实例。以华西医院对网络高稳定性、易维护的实际需求为出发点，结合边缘UPF，本文对目前阶段 5G 面向医疗健康应用的组网方案进行了初步探讨。对于王者荣耀游戏业务，往往对时延要求较高，因此文中给出了基于5G MEC的优化方案, 实验结果显示，相比4G场景访问终端服务器，优化后的整体通信延时缩短40ms以上。两个实例均体现了MEC和UPF显著提升了现有网络的性能，体现了其在未来网络中的巨大应用价值。

Research and practice of MEC and UPF IN 5G core network

With the advent of 5G era, how to design a new core network has become an urgent problem to meet the needs of high bandwidth and low delay in AR / VR, self-driving and other new services. This paper first analyzes the challenges of the new requirements of 5G network to the existing communication network, thus illustrating the need for 5G core network research. Secondly, this paper introduces the basic functions and system architecture of the key technology MEC in 5G network. UPF is the link between 5G core network and MEC. This paper focuses on its basic definition, interface design and corresponding data forwarding process. Finally, this paper presents two examples of applications of 5G networks in smart healthcare and handheld gaming. Taking the actual needs of Huaxi Hospital for high stability and easy maintenance of the network as the starting point, combined with edge UPF, this paper provides a preliminary discussion of the current 5G networking scheme for medical and health applications. For the King"s Glory game business, there is often a high demand for latency. Therefore, this paper presents an optimized scheme based on 5G MEC. The experimental results show that compared with 4G scenario, the optimized overall communication delay is reduced by more than 40ms. Both examples demonstrate that MEC and UPF significantly improve the performance of existing networks and demonstrate their great value for future applications in networks.