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5G TECHNOLOGY: A BRIEF PRIMER

Dr. Thyaga Nandagopal

National Science Foundation

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5G Network Architecture

Source: https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/white-papers/security-in-5g-ran-and-core-deployments

  • Base Station (gNodeB/gNB) is part of RAN
  • 5G Core is the routers and control functionality
  • Network is (virtually) split across a ‘user plane’ and a ‘control plane’
  • User Plane carries data traffic.
  • Control Plane is used for establishing connections, tracking, locating users, billing, authentication, etc.

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Key terms and deployment options

  • EPC: Evolved Packet Core (4G)
  • LTE: Long-Term Evolution (4G)
  • 5GC: 5G Core (5G)
  • NR: New Radio (5G)

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  • NSA: Non-Stand Alone Mode
    • (when 4G and 5G are deployed to co-exist and use each others’ networks)
  • SA: Stand Alone Mode
    • When 5G is deployed separately.

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Feature differences of 5G over 4G

  • Faster speeds (1 Gbps per user)
  • Faster connections (less than 10ms)
  • More connections (10x more – thousands per base station)
  • Uses more spectrum
    • Low-bands (600 MHz – 900 MHz)
    • Mid-band (2 – 6 GHz)
    • High-band (24 – 90 GHz)
  • Lower power consumption in low- and mid-band spectrum

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  • More Software-Centric
    • Significantly less hardware components
  • Virtualization support
  • Software-defined networking

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  • Faster feature refreshes
  • Tighter security functions
    • Some at the expense of performance
    • Many optional

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Cybersecurity Implications

  • With increasing dependence on 5G networks, any entry point into communication networks can be used to compromise anyone, or any device.
  • 5G is software-defined: closed-source versus open-source
    • More eyes on the code are better
  • Audit trails needed for supply chains: hardware AND software
    • SolarWinds hack is an example – obscure, potentially unreliable, suppliers
    • A small circuit on a chip, or a single function of software code can compromise security
  • Network deployment is not the problem
    • Upgrades and feature updates are
    • Both unintentional and deliberate bugs can be introduced
    • Incentives for operators to continually verify code is minimal
      • Cost can be prohibitive, and is usually not baked into support contract costs
  • Monoculture (single vendor supplier) increases such cybersecurity risk
    • Harder to notice, if inconsistencies not detected by other vendor systems

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Open Interfaces and open source

Open interfaces: seeing the connections between these boxes

Open source: seeing inside each of these boxes

Source: https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/white-papers/security-in-5g-ran-and-core-deployments