Mission Critical Services: evolution of Quality of Service management over 5G networks

Fifth generation technologies are now present in many sectors of the IT market. Companies, entities and operators are moving to understand how to adapt their products to this technological advance and how to exploit its benefits. In the same way, Mission Critical Services (MCS) and all their stakeholders are also affected by this evolution of the network and therefore it becomes necessary to understand how Quality of Service (QoS) management, the cornerstone of MC communications, can be carried out and supported in the new 5G networks. The intent of this thesis is to understand how 5G networks and MC communications can coexist, exploiting the benefits that the 5G cellular technology brings with it. Two possible solutions and/or strategies are therefore presented in order to allow MC communications on 5G networks. The first is based on the concept of “network slicing” which allows to define on the same physical infrastructure a set of independent logical and/or virtual networks capable of operating simultaneously. The second strategy uses the innovative architecture of the 5G Core network (5GC), where each element of the network, called Network Function (NF), is an independent virtual entity that communicates with the other network functions through the different services they offer to be invoked or invoke in turn. In particular, the N5 interface is exploited to manage the QoS rules, which are fundamental for the creation of MC services.