Future mode of operations for 5G - The SELFNET approach enabled by SDN/NFV

The 5G infrastructure initiative in Europe1 has agreed a number of challenging key performance indicators (KPIs) to significantly enhance the user experience and support a number of use cases with very demanding requirements on the network infrastructure. At the same time there is high pressure on the reduction of the operational expenditure (OPEX). A contribution to meeting the KPIs and to reduce OPEX is to evolve the management of the network into a fully autonomic and intelligent framework. Based on advanced technologies, such as Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), the EU H2020 project SELFNET (https://selfnet-5g.eu/) is proposing an advanced network management framework to achieve these objectives.