Software interfaces for control, optimization and update of 5G machine type communication networks

5G machine type communication (MTC) networks will be formed of dense, heterogeneous clusters of wireless devices serving different application verticals, such as urban service enablers, body area networks, industrial and home automation and entertainment. They will use a large number of existing and emerging wireless technologies served by advanced 5G gateways or Internet of Things eNodeBs and controlled through software interfaces by control and application programs, reducing the need for on-site, manual reconfigurations. In this paper, we focus on the software interfaces that enable the control of 5G MTC networks and propose a functional split of upstream and downstream functions. We show similarities with application programming interface (API) development in object-oriented (OO) languages and with representation state transfer (RESTful) principles. We provide a reference implementation using RESTful functionality and an example control application that performs localization.