Open Mobile Edge Cloud (OMEC) Workshop

May 8-9, 2017

The IEEE SDN Initiative has launched a project on Open Mobile Edge Cloud under the leadership of Cagatay Buyukkoc, IEEE SDN Pre-Industrial Committee Co-Chair. This project was mainly introduced in  a White Paper of the SDN Initiative entitled “Towards 5G Software-Defined Ecosystems” that followed a Service Provider Summit and Open Mobile Edge Cloud Workshop held in June 2016 in Venice, Italy.

The OMEC Roadmap Workshop is a satellite-event, collocated with the IM 2017 Conference. It takes place on May 8-9, 2017, and participation is free for all those already registered for the IM 2017 Main Conference.

The move to new storage, compute and network intensive applications such as the “Immersive Experience”, “Tactile Internet”, “Context Information”, and “X as a Service” as delivered by wireless networks, are creating the demand for new way of approaching the network infrastructure.

OMEC promises to move past the current client-server models of today, to a network in which the network infrastructure is reduced to simplistic pipes. This vision requires a complete revamping of the E2E architecture and its services including: network interfaces, management and control frameworks, access and non-access protocols, functions, and advanced algorithms (e.g., AAA).

The OMEC Roadmap Workshop is the 1st of 3 international workshops aimed at building a temporally-focused roadmap to the development of the OMEC architecture. The roadmap will be based on horizon scanning, interviews and expert knowledge and will identify clearly defined projects which will lead flexibly and iteratively through each time segment of the roadmap. The mission of the Roadmap working group is to identify short (~2 years), mid-term (~4 years) and long-term (~6 years) research, innovation and technology trends in the communications ecosystem which will inform and define OMEC related projects. The roadmap will be developed with an eye on the needs of the demand-side community as well as those of the wider industry & standards ecosystem. The outcome shall be a living document with a clear set of (actionable and clearly defined) recommendations; the document shall be updated annually and be developed in conjunction with other working groups.

The OMEC Roadmap will embrace the following critical areas:

  • Rethinking the mobility edge (The converged wireline/wireless edge).
  • Fronthaul /backhaul requirements and restrictions.
  • The decoupling of user and control planes using SDN
  • Deconstruction of basic functions of RAN, the potential application of CRAN (various flavors) and 5G applications of RAN and CRAN.
  • Centralized BBUs to provide adequate signal processing in performance targets including spectral and energy efficiencies.
  • The development of a new functional node, “Open node”, that provides seamless coverage and that executes various control /management functions and “core functions” currently placed in various nodes of EPC.
  • Expanded functionality related to Compute and Storage to enable truly cloud capabilities in closer proximities.