As the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems are commercially deployed, they bring new services, enhance user experiences, and offer various opportunities to different industries. Despite its advancements, 5G encounters several challenges. To tackle these issues, global industrial, academic, and standards organizations are actively researching on sixth generation (6G) wireless communication systems. 6G networks are envisioned as a transformative shift in the interactions between the physical, digital, and human realms, paving the way for a pervasive human-centered cyber-physical world. 6G is positioned to be a platform that offers communication and beyond communication services considering both performance and value centric technological development approaches. In this paper, we present the way forward towards the design of 6G end-to-end (E2E) system as a consolidated view of leading industry stakeholders and academia in the European level 6G flagship project Hexa-X-II. We discuss the key challenges with 5G and how 6G is expected to tackle those by introducing new technological innovations and supporting novel use case requirements. We provide a comprehensive methodology for the design of a 6G E2E system including ten principles, a blueprint, and a structured design process. The architecture design principles prioritize environmental sustainability, digital inclusiveness, and trustworthiness, considering their impact on the 6G E2E system. The blueprint is described corresponding to the infrastructure, network centric application, and application layers, as well as the pervasive functionalities and the relevant technological innovations. Following the design principles and the system blueprint, the design process is demonstrated as two-way approaches (i.e., 1) key performance and value indicators based design process. 2) top-down versus bottom-up alignment process) through the lens of a collaborative robot use case. Through this use case, a special attention is given to the technological enablers that cover management and orchestration functionalities and their 6G enhancement to go beyond the limitations characterizing the previous network generation. In addition, virtual modelling aspects related to digital twining and simulations for 6G E2E system design are also discussed.

5G is considered to be the technology that will accommodate the development and management of innovative services with stringent and diverse requirements from end users, calling for new business models from the industry. In this context, the development and efficient management of Network Services (NS) serving specific vertical industries and spanning across multiple administrative domains and heterogeneous infrastructures is challenging. The main challenges regard the efficient provision of NSs considering the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements per vertical industry along with the optimal usage of the allocated resources. Towards addressing these challenges, this paper details an innovative approach that we have developed for managing and orchestrating such NSs, called SONATA, and compare it with OSM and Cloudify, which are two of the most known open-source Management and Orchestration (MANO) frameworks. In addition to examining the supported orchestration mechanisms per MANO framework, an evaluation of main operational and functional KPIs is provided based on experimentation using a real testbed. The final aim is the identification of their strong and weak points, and the assessment of their suitability for serving diverse vertical industry needs, including of course the Internet of Things (IoT) service ecosystem.

Data center (DC) interconnection allows us to have optical transmissions between DCs directly connected to optical networks, avoiding the use of a packet-based infrastructure. Thanks to the use of next-generation pluggable coherent optics, it is possible to create connectivity services (CSs) across multiple optical transport domains. In this multi-domain CS scenario, cloud operators and transport operators have to work together in the most dynamic way possible. To do so, they need a common place (i.e., a market) where the transport operators may expose their available optical resources and the cloud operators request (e.g., rent) them to be used in order to create end-to-end (E2E) CSs between DCs. Having multiple transport operators exposing their resource information in a common place requires a set of common rules (i.e., how much of the topology to show) to create E2E CSs requested between cloud operators. This paper makes use of the blockchain technology to present a blockchain-based extension for the software-defined network (SDN) architecture to allow each optical transport operator domain to become a peer in a blockchain network. In there, each peer follows the same rules and shares the same exact level of topology information by using a specific abstraction model to map the optical domain resources. This paper uses a set of three different abstraction models to validate their behavior on a blockchain system when managing multiple domain resources and the deployment of CSs across these domains. To do so, an experimental comparison on how the different abstraction models affect the performance of the blockchain system is presented.

Research on vehicle-to-everything (V2X) is attracting significant attention nowadays, driven by the recent advances in beyond-5G (B5G) networks and the multi-access edge computing (MEC) paradigm. However, the inherent heterogeneity of B5G combined with the security vulnerabilities of MEC infrastructure in dynamic V2X scenarios introduces unprecedented challenges. Efficient resource and security management in multi-domain V2X environments is vital, especially with the growing threat of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against critical V2X services within MEC. Our approach employs the zero-touch network and service management (ZSM) standard, integrating autonomous security into end-to-end (E2E) slicing management. We consider an entire 5G network, including vehicular user equipment, radio access networks, MEC, and core components, in the presence of DDoS targeting V2X services. Our framework complies with security service-level agreements (SSLAs) and policies, autonomously deploying and interconnecting security sub-slices across domains. Security requirements are continuously monitored and, upon DDoS detection, our framework reacts with a coordinated E2E strategy. The strategy mitigates DDoS at the MEC and deploys countermeasures in neighboring domains. Performance assessment reveals effective DDoS detection and mitigation with low latency, aligned with the mission-critical nature of certain V2X services. This work is part of ETSI ZSM PoC “security SLA assurance in 5G network slices”.

This article aims to explore the requirements and challenges that Intent-Based Management (IBM) systems should look towards to deliver proper automation management in multi-stakeholder 6G scenarios. To do so, the evolution of the telecommunications actors is presented to identify how they will interact with the use of intents and what IBM systems must face to fulfil with the tenants expectations while interacting among other IBM domains (aggregation vs. federation models). In a second step, this article presents how the IBM systems functionalities should be organized (based on standards research and comparative) and a set of enablers using them to properly deliver the automation needed to accomplish the requests done by the tenants. On a third step, a set of End-to-End (E2E) intent-based services are described to illustrate how the different enablers (and the functionalities they use) may work to reach the E2E service goal. Finally, a set of experimental results related to how intent conflicts should be manage is presented, followed by the conclusions.