Provisioning Private 5G Networks by Means of Network Slicing: Architectures and Challenges

The need of private 5G network for vertical use cases and applications motivates telecommunication industry to build a novel framework for non-public networks (NPN) framework. In this paper, we analyze various NPN deployment scenarios, including public network integrated NPN scenarios together with the key enablers. From which, the two most interesting and relevant PNI-NPN scenarios for operators and verticals are studied, namely: (i) RAN-CP sharing of PNI-NPN and (ii) RAN-CP-UP sharing of PNI-NPN. Based on that, we discussed how the sensitive subscription information and user plane traffic can be managed and controlled in PNI-NPN taking into consideration of deployment options, architectural aspects and isolation requirements. Finally, a number of high-level discussion topics are provided for the future work of PNI-NPN standardization in 3GPP mobile network architecture giving a technical direction in which such networks could evolve.