Enabling Multicast Services in Distributed 5G Networks
The proliferation of applications and multimedia services has led users to demand more bandwidth while limiting access time to the target content. The current 5G specifications provide mechanisms to support these challenging requirements by leveraging both the slicing paradigm, which enables the allocation of network resources with dedicated Quality of Service (QoS), and the Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), bringing content as close as possible to end users. Two additional key enablers can further improve user experience: the 5G non-3GPP access and the use of Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN). The former could extend the overall coverage by exploiting legacy technologies, largely deployed, such as Wi-Fi, which can also avoid frequency license issues in many cases. The latter represents the most efficient solution to support multicast/broadcast content distribution towards the edges of the network. These key enablers are addressed in the ESA 5G-EMERGE project, where 5G, satellite broadcasting, and a Content Delivery Network (CDN) are integrated to efficiently deliver IP-based multimedia services. In this framework, the contribution of this paper is to describe the innovative reference architecture and technologies proposed in 5G-EMERGE, focusing on the implementation and validation of a non-3GPP edge component compliant with the 5G MEC architecture, leveraging NTN as backbone, interworking with a commercial 5G core network, and providing support for QoS enforcement and multicast delivery. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution in terms of both delay reduction and bandwidth optimization.