Athonet is successfully collaborating with Cumucore and Nemergent in multi-vendor deployments of 5G networks and mission-critical services (MCX).

In the context of FUDGE-5G, Athonet and Cumucore are carrying out a multi-vendor integration of the 5GC’s Control Plane from Athonet with the 5G’s User Plane from Cumucore, and namely the integration of Athonet’s Session Management Function (SMF) and Cumucore’s User Plane Function (UPF) over the N4 interface exposed by Athonet’s 5G core network. For this purpose, an on-cloud instance of Athonet’s 5G core network is being utilized, made available by Athonet on the AWS public cloud. This solution is suitable for integration with technology partners requesting for a simple and quick way to interwork with Athonet’s core network components. Such solution includes the full set of core network components, which can directly connect to gNBs of the Radio Access Network (RAN) deployed locally at the customer/partner’s premises via simple Internet connectivity, protected by VPN. Thanks to the modularization of the core, the same cloudified solution can be split between control- and user-plane components to allow the integration of the counterpart’s components by any technology partner.

Further, Athonet’s 5G core network and FUDGE-5G’s third-party partner Nemergent’s Mission Critical Services (MCX) application have been successfully integrated and tested in the project’s Network on Wheel at Fornebu.  Following the 3GPP standards, the integration involved the use of the N5 interface to perform end-to-end 5G Quality of Service (QoS) modification and control mechanisms.

The N4 and N5 interfaces involved in these activities are implemented following the 3GPP standard specifications.