3 December 2020, Shenzhen, China - ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today has released the Full-Scenario UPF Deployment White Paper, to introduce the innovative UPF (User Plane Function) deployment solution.

In accordance with differentiated SLA (Service Level Agreement) requirements of latency, bandwidth and reliability, the UPF can be deployed at the central DC (Data Center), regional DC, edge DC, and campus DC. Therefore, ZTE has introduced the full-scenario UPF deployment solution, which provides a series of UPF products covering three types of hardware platforms: COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) server, high-density dedicated hardware and hyper-integrated single shelf, so as to meet telcos’ full-scenario deployment requirements.

ZTE’s full-scenario UPF deployment solution precisely addresses various service requirements of telcos and industry customers. For instance, the central UPF is applicable to services that are latency-insensitive and high-throughput, such as Internet access, VoLTE and NB-IoT. Therefore, the central UPF should be featured in full convergence of 2G/3G/4G/5G, high-performance forwarding capability and so on.

Meanwhile, the regional UPF is deployed within urban areas, including Internet access, audio and video, and local enterprise services. It is deployed at the city DC, which helps reduce the transmission pressure of data traffic backhaul on the transport network and reduces service latency. 

The edge UPF is usually deployed at the county edge, to address high-bandwidth, latency-sensitive, and highly-confidential services. It identifies users based on DNN (Data Network Name) / IP address, and offloads user traffic according to offloading policies. It performs data local processing and forwarding, thus avoiding detour, reducing data forwarding latency, and improving user experiences.

In addition, the campus UPF is deployed in the enterprise equipment room. As industry applications and industrial environments are quite different from the public network, the campus UPF should be enhanced in different dimensions in addition to basic traffic forwarding and local offloading, such as on-demand customization functions, R16 new feature 5G LAN (Local Area Network), TSN (Time Sensitive Networking), URLLC (Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication), simplified O&M (Operation and Maintenance), and high security with local data processing and storage.

Moving forward, ZTE will continue to work with telcos and industry partners to jointly promote the maturity of the industry ecosystem, pioneer in 5G user plane technologies, and explore the innovation of new business models.

The following is the link to access the Full-Scenario UPF Deployment White Paper:
https://res-www.zte.com.cn/mediares/zte/Files/PDF/white_book/202012021417.pdf