NRF NF Discovery Prioritized Location Mapping
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Solution Overview
Problem
In 5G telecommunications networks, consumer NFs often fail to discover and select the most optimized producer NF for service provision due to incorrect or unavailable preferred locality attributes during NF discovery, leading to increased latency and suboptimal service communication.
Innovation Solution
The proposed solution involves maintaining a preferred locality attribute mappings database at the NRF, which maps preferred locality attributes to prioritized lists of locations, allowing the NRF to modify the priority attributes of NF profiles based on relative location preference indicators, ensuring that producer NFs with matching localities are prioritized over those without, thereby optimizing NF selection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the NRF uses the preferred locality attribute to generate a prioritized list of NF profiles, then producer NFs with matching localities are prioritized, but when no matching localities exist, producer NFs farther away are prioritized resulting in increased latency
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-establishes mappings between preferred locality attributes and prioritized lists of locations before NF discovery occurs. When a discovery request arrives, the NRF simply looks up the pre-computed prioritized list based on the preferred locality attribute, avoiding the need to compute priorities in real-time and ensuring optimal locations are always selected.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary mapping mechanism that translates the preferred locality attribute into a prioritized list of locations. This intermediary layer decouples the locality attribute from the NF selection process, allowing the system to handle cases where no exact locality match exists by providing a fallback prioritized list that prevents selecting suboptimal distant locations.
2Ease of operation
If the NRF maintains a simple NF profiles database, then the system is easier to manage, but it cannot provide optimized NF selection based on preferred locality attributes and location priorities
Solution Approach 1:
The NF selection functionality is segmented into two independent components: the NF profiles database and the preferred locality attribute mappings database. The NF profiles database maintains basic NF information, while the mappings database stores pre-computed location priorities. This segmentation allows each component to remain simple while their combination enables optimized NF selection based on preferred locality attributes.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for processing NF discovery requests using prioritized lists of preferred locations includes maintaining an NF profiles database including NF profiles of producer NFs registered to provide service to other NFs and a preferred locality attribute mappings database including mappings between preferred locality attributes and prioritized lists of preferred locations. The method includes receiving, from an NF, an NF discovery request including query parameters and a preferred locality attribute. The method further includes accessing the preferred locality attribute mappings database using the preferred locality attribute and obtaining a prioritized list of preferred locations corresponding to the preferred locality attribute, accessing the NF profiles database using the query parameters and identifying NF profiles of producer NFs capable of providing a service indicated by the query parameters, and prioritizing the NF profiles according to the prioritized list of preferred locations. An NF discovery response is generated and transmitted to the NF.