Intent Negotiation Empowers Advanced Operations for the Intent-Driven Autonomous Network

To meet digital transformation requirements and evolve network management and operation systems using automation and intelligence, the Autonomous Network (AN) has become an industry hotspot. Intent is considered to be essential to drive the high-level evolution of AN. The intent-driven approach focuses more on describing the “What” needs to be achieved but less on “How” that outcome should be achieved. Further-more, intent negotiation represents the interaction between the Intent Owner and the Intent Handler, which enables further refined and optimized operation and management. However, the intent negotiation functionality is still in the initial stage. In this work, we summarize the latest progress for intent-driven AN in different standard development organizations (SDOs). Then, we investigate the possible problems for intent negotiation and propose feasible solutions. Assistant information, including recommended actions to be performed by the Intent Owner to modify the intent and corresponding reasons, is provided to the Intent Owner to help improve intent expression. Based on the proposed intent negotiation workflow, the commercial verification for intent-driven video service mean opinion score (MOS) assurance in Liuzhou is introduced. Powered by intent-driven service assurance, enhanced customer experience is ensured through differentiated resource allocation and scheduling, which provides a valuable practice for intent-driven AN.