Collaborated Closed Loops for Autonomous End-to-End Service Management in 5G

In 5G networks of high complexity, autonomous management of the end-to-end (E2E) services is desired. Closed-loop (CL) control is a future-proof means to enable this autonomy. In the multi-provider, multi-vendor, and multi-tenant environment, the autonomous service management demands collaborations of all providers and vendors. In this paper, the collaboration problem is formulated as cross-CL collaboration involving multiple CLs participating in the E2E service management. We present a cross-CL collaboration framework with key elements, e.g., APIs, governance models, intent and policies management. Then a representative use case of service assurance with edge clouds is described to exemplify how the framework is applied to implement cross-CL collaborations and answer key questions: WHEN collaboration is needed; and HOW collaboration is enabled.