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ONF Releases SD-Core v1.3 Enhancing Cloud-Native Capabilities

May 8, 2023
Denise Barton
Denise Barton About the author

ONF is pleased to announce the release of SD-Core v1.3. Release features focused on stabilizing Cloud Native support for 5G network functions and the addition of a 5G Metric Dashboard for displaying data from the 5G core network.

Release Highlights

5G Metric Dashboard
The Metric Function has been added as a new NF in 5G Core. It is used to collect and process 5G Cloud Native metrics. The Metric Function acts as both metrics aggregator and processor towards metric consumers like Analytics Engine, API Server or Prometheus Server. 

 The 5G Metric dashboard shows whether the gNodeB and UPF are connected to the core, how many active UEs there are, including UE’s IMSI and Slice information, and the uplink (Tx Bitrate) and downlink (Rx Bitrate) throughput at the UPF.  Metrics work can be extended to show various metrics from the 5G core network.

Metric Function Features
- API Server exposure
- Prometheus Client exposure
- Analytics Function exposure (not supported in this release) 

NRF Cache and Notification
As part of NF Discovery Service, Each NF discovers Target NF for its profiles from NRF and stores Target NF profiles in a local cache. One cache is created per Target NF Type to make the lookup faster. Each NF profile entry stores a TTL value that is set based on the validity period received in the NF Discovery Response. The expired entries are periodically evicted from the cache by an eviction routine. Default this feature is enabled. 

Test IMSI Support
This support allows users to employ Test UEs with leading zeroes (mcc/mnc with leading zeroes) with SD-Core 5G. This eliminates the conflict with commercial PLMNs during UE attach.

Static UE IP-Address Support
The SMF supports allocation of static IP-address to UE. This feature is available via configuration of SUPI to IP-address mapping under SMF specific section via override values file. 

 Dynamic Subscription revoking provision
This feature enables 5G networks to revoke subscription of specific UE. It is required that user identifies the IP-Address of a specific UE to be disabled. The custom user application can make available the IP-Address of specific UE to 5G core network via Metric-Function API. The 5G network shall revoke the specific UE’s subscription based on UE IP-Addresses received.

gNBSim Improvements
Enhanced gNBSim code to support multiple gNBs. 

Release Tested with Real gNode B and UEs
In addition to testing of SD-Core v1.3 with ONF’s gNBSim which simulates UE/gNB, multiple SD-Core community members successfully tested SD-Core v1.3 against real UE and gNBs. Devices tested include gNodeB from Sercomm and phones: Google Pixel and Moto5G.  

The 5G core code was enhanced to support the test IMSI (the one having mcc/mnc as leading zeroes) for development testing. 

Multiple SMF and AMF instances inter-operation:
SMF and AMF support stateless and high-availability features. Multiple instances for AMF and SMF are supported but need to be scaled up/down manually in the current release.

SD-Core V1.3 Release Notes
The complete SD-Core V1.3 release notes can be found here.

SD-Core Community Contributions
We received many contributions from community members and in particular wish to recognize several individuals and organizations for their efforts: Ankur Upadhyaya, Badhrinath Padmanabhan, Vijaya Tiruveedula, GS Lab, Infosys, Intel and Purdue University. We sincerely thank all community members for their contributions and look forward to their continued support. To stay updated on SD-Core activities please join our mailing list

SD-Core v1.3.0 Techinar

Register to join us for the SD-Core v1.3.0 Techinar on May 31st at 9:00am Pacific. Members of the SD-Core community will provide an overview of the new features and will answer audience questions. Register here.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Denise Barton
Denise BartonMarketing Director