Latency-aware Placement for State Management Functions in Service-based 5G Mobile Core Network

Network function virtualization is reshaping the 5G mobile core network which is monolithic and hardware-based design into cloud-based and service-based design. In 5G mobile core network, core network functions are redesigned as virtual network functions which are classified as state management functions and stateless control and data plane functions. In such new 5G network architecture, the stateless control and data plane functions can be scalable and placed near all radio access networks. However, the placement problem of state management functions which involve more design objectives is more complicated to tackle. In this paper, we formulate a multi-objective optimization problem which takes into account the state transfer frequency and network latency as key design objectives. We propose three solutions to this problem and evaluate our solutions by changing network environment parameters.