Efficient indoor positioning of the industrial devices is a key pillar of the digitalized factories. In 5G/6G era, the integration of positioning, the network communication and the environmental information is important to enhance the accuracy and performance for various use cases. In this direction, there is a need of a unified framework that is able to aggregate knowledge about device positioning from multiple systems and provide value added services for the vertical industries to realize their use cases. In this paper, we propose a positioning service function that combines the relevant information gained from different sources for providing enhanced positioning services with predictions. In addition, this paper presents a methodology based on Asset Administration Shell (AAS) to implement the proposed functionalities. The proposed approach outlines future direction on enhancing positioning services in smart factories to improve network and service management. We further illustrate our suggested way forward through a smart manufacturing use case.

An intent is the formal specification of all expectations including requirements, goals, and constraints given to a technical system. Intent-based management is considered as one of the key enablers of autonomous network management and service assurance mechanisms. However, the use of intents in industrial networks to achieve end-to-end automation has not been addressed yet. The intent handling operations in an industrial setting require particular vocabulary and semantics to provide specialized support for industrial requirements. Therefore, this paper proposes to extend the intent common model introduced by the TM Forum and defines an intent extension model to simplify the management of the industrial networks supporting enterprises. Besides, the vision towards achieving an integrated intent-based automation for industries is introduced.

The factory operators lack 3GPP network knowledge and there is a requirement for industrial 5G networks to enable zero-touch automation which will translate factory business expectations to technical expectations. Integrating the intent-based operations is a key approach to implement intelligent network management system which can automatically verify, deploy, configure and optimize itself to meet the targets and goals. However, there is still a need for human intervention (e.g., factory operators) to place the intents. In this paper, we propose a solution based on Asset Administration Shell (AAS) to implement digital twins of the 5G network and 5G-capable factory devices. The proposed solution approach implements necessary submodels in AAS instances, so that the factory devices can place their own intents with minimized manual intervention. This framework is implemented and demonstrated with an automation system in conjunction with a 5G emulation environment.

The ever-growing complexity in networks and the various future use cases with diverse, and often stringent performance requirements call for a higher level of automation. A tool to achieve this higher level of automation is intent-based management, where the human operator only communicates via high-level intents with the network. Intents are declarative in nature, they specify the desired state but don’t specify how to achieve it. The system will assure that the intents are fulfilled, by monitoring the behavior of the network, and adjusting its configurations if needed. In future networks that will serve multiple tenants and use cases at the same time, many intents will co-exist. As the resources are limited, conflicts may arise between intents. Therefore, a solution is needed for conflict detection and resolution. In this paper, we present a system that is capable of handling multiple intents and detecting and resolving conflicts at run-time. To show the feasibility, we implement our approach in an end-to-end prototype.

In addition to traditional network services, it is now possible to realize innovative services through the integration of small-form smart devices into our daily lives. Although the set of modern end-user devices have a certain processing power, the execution of the service routines may be handled by remote servers due to battery limitation and other capacity restrictions. The traditional network infrastructure and location- centric communication mechanisms provided by the TCP/IP protocol stack have become inadequate for orchestrating these highly-dynamic operations in a smooth manner. Therefore, it is envisioned that the network structure should be service-oriented to decouple the service instances from their locations. In order to leverage the service-centric model within the network, this study proposes a programmable network solution based on P4. The design of the solution is discussed with the P4 terminology and the implementation details are presented with a demonstrative example to validate the applicability of the solution. The fully-programmable P4 environment enables to facilitate a long-term solution that is compatible with the current network infrastructure and TCP/IP protocol stack.

The current developments in smart devices, wearable gadgets and IoT (Internet-of-Things) are triggering a variety of novel use cases and services. Once the technology matures, a wide range of services is expected to be provided at the edge of the network in coordination with the cloud computing infrastructure. These services will be highly dynamic meaning that they can be served from edge computing facilities and from central cloud servers being transferred back and forth. Also, considering the mobility of the users and the varying demand, those services might need to be live migrated between nearby edge servers on-the-fly. This setup creates an environment that needs to be transparent to the end users. The current legacy networking paradigm, however, allow services to be reached by IP and port addresses, not by their content. Alternatively, in the service-centric approach the services themselves are handled independent of their location and the focus shifts to “what ” instead of “where ”. Due to the complexities involved, it is not a straightforward task to establish service-centricity at the edge scenarios. As a remedy, this paper proposes a service-centric approach at the edge servers using orchestration capabilities offered by the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology. To demonstrate how SDN can help to alleviate the problem, an emulation environment is used in which northbound applications are implemented in order to setup the service-centric structure. The effect of service-centric approach is shown with the load balancing experiments where the performance of the proposed system is evaluated for various use cases.