5GCity H2020 Project to Enable 5G Multi-access Edge Computing Infrastructure

A Distributed Cloud and Radio Platform for 5G Neutral Hosts

The 5GCity project aims to build and deploy a common, multi-tenant, open platform that extends the cloud model to the extreme edge of the network, to maximize the return on investment for the whole digital market chain (users, application, cloud providers, i.e., the municipalities themselves, telecom providers, and infrastructure providers). It ambitions to solve a major challenge in the 5G-based edge virtualization domain, by designing a neutral host platform for densely populated environments. A distributed cloud and radio platform for municipalities and infrastructure owners acting as 5G neutral hosts is designed and deployed in three different cities, Barcelona, Bristol and Lucca.

From a technical perspective, the project provides an evolving cloud architectures adapted to the edge of the network; to resolve the following challenges within the 5G ecosystem:

Deployment and run-time management of densely interconnected and decentralized cloud and network infrastructures.

Tight-loop interactions between the computing and networking infrastructures at the edge of the network.

Performance optimization for resource-constrained devices placed at the edge of the network.

Slicing and neutral hosting support at the wireless edge, where bandwidth needs to be guaranteed for different slices, and tenant-specific counters need to be added to support elastic usage and billing of resources.

Within this project Virtual Open Systems develops the virtualization extensions, including KVM and containers. The platform provides a flexible VM, unikernel and container image management. A novel virtual infrastructure management (VIM) to target the challenges of MEC is also carried on. VOSYSwitch virtual switch is an extended component of the 5GCity platform, to provide a flexible, SDN-enabled network virtualization solution.