Fifth Generation Fixed Network (F5G)

Introduction

We are entering a new era of communication, where fixed networks will play an even more essential role. Fixed networks have always offered the highest bandwidths and availability with the lowest energy usage. The development of a full fibre and full optical solutions will help to support the most demanding applications, such as ultra-high definition video streaming, telemedicine, virtual reality (VR) gaming, and more to come.

Next generations of fixed networks are needed to complement the mobile/ wireless networks (5G/6G) and support the growing number of cloud services requiring high bandwidth and/or low latency connections. Built on previous generations of fixed networks, the ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) F5G studies and develops the generations of the fixed network fostering the evolution to a “fibre to everywhere” ecosystem that enables new and enhanced services leveraging, in a framework of growing network capabilities, better performance, intelligent E2E management, network security and enhanced energy efficiency.

ISG F5G aims to work as a hub for the development of fibre-based networks standardization in an E2E perspective, identifying major use cases and requirements and interacting with all relevant SDOs and industry stakeholders to produce new standards, where required, or enhancements to existing standards that may be needed to fulfil the identified use cases.

ETSI ISG F5G developed F5G release 1 and release 2 of the technical specifications addressing the 5th fixed generation standardization. During the next years, ETSI ISG F5G will study and develop the future fixed networks generations, starting from F5G-A (5th generation Advanced) and F6G (6th generation), while maintaining and enhancing the releases already published.

Evolution to F5G Advanced

ETSI ISG F5G will enhance and expand previous solutions to F5G Advanced, and the evolved and new characteristics of the F5G-Advanced network will address six main features:

Enhancement to:

• Enhanced fixed broadband (eFBB)
• Guaranteed reliable experience (GRE)
• Full-fibre connection (FFC)

Expansion to:

• Green Agile Optical-Network (GAO)
• Real-time Resilient Link (RRL)
• Optical Sensing and Visualization (OSV)

They can be used to represent the evolution of the technology and services (see figure below).

F5G-Advanced will provide over 10 times higher bandwidth, 10 times denser fibre connections, and 10 times better reliability, 10x better energy efficiency, sensing on 1m accuracy, <1 ms latency, autonomous level 4.

F5G-Advanced will open new opportunities by comprehensively applying fibre and optical technology to various scenarios and expanding the reach of fibre to everything, everywhere, to benefit all industry verticals (e.g. telecom, education, healthcare, finance, energy, transportation and manufacturing).

Our Role & Activities

ETSI ISG F5G will study the following aspects:

• Identifying and developing the overall characteristics of the F5G-A and the F6G generations of fixed network
• exploring all relevant F5G-A and F6G scenarios and related use cases and services including (but not limited to) home, business, multiple vertical industries and mobile/ wireless x-haul
• performing a gap analysis to identify the necessity for both enhancements to existing technology specifications and/or developments of new technology specifications where required to fulfil the identified use cases
• studying the overall framework, outlining the complete F5G-A and F6G technology landscape
• developing an E2E reference architecture for F5G-A and F6G networks
• specifying flexible and agile E2E management, enhancing QoE and QoS
• managing the ISG F5G Proof of Concept framework leveraging PoC activities that validate specifications, services or architecture options developed throughout the work on ISG F5G
• evaluating and analysing security aspects of F5G-A (cooperation with TC Cyber)
• leveraging the synergies between fixed networks (Transport, Aggregation, Access) and wireless communications to foster convergence in residential, enterprise and vertical services
• studying migration path scenarios towards the F5G-A and the F6G

The expected evolution of the fixed network creates new opportunities by extending the use of optical networks and services to a wide variety of scenarios (home, office, campus, industry and extended support to wireless networks) and increasing their  penetration in different environments (Fibre To The Room, Fibre To The Desk, Fibre To The Machine).

Expanding the network capabilities will allow the improvement of existing, and the support of new, services.

The new network capabilities and the new services will include:

• Home scenarios where emerging UHD immersive experience and cloud oriented services such as Metaverse, Cloud VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) video streaming, online gaming, etc., introduce the necessity for ultra-broadband, extremely low latency and zero packet loss.
• Business scenarios such as enterprise digitization and Cloudification, where premium computing integrated networks enable operators to offer new capabilities and resources in a “X as a service” model, requiring enhanced network capabilities, high reliability and high security.
• Vertical industry scenarios with stringent demand for deterministic networking, very low latency and packet jitter, high reliability, network slicing for addressing different business needs, digital twins and requirements for end to end computing power and networking coordination.
• The massive deployment of wireless networks, primarily in 5G and beyond, bringing growing needs for an efficient optical infrastructure that can deliver the bandwidth, latency and dense distribution required to support those networks.
• The green and digital transformation, requiring the improving energy efficiency that optical networks can offer (cooperation with TC EE).
• The evolution towards the autonomous network paradigm.
• The enablement of services based on the sensing capabilities of fibre cables and Wi-Fi, both for enhancements of the network management as well as new service offerings that make use of those capabilities

Industry use cases and relevant potential requirements will be clearly documented with the corresponding technology landscape.

F5G full fibre approach aims to maximize the synergy with the related transport, access and in-premises technologies such as fgOTN, 50G-PON and supplementary technologies such as Wi-Fi 7 and FTTR. New technologies or extensions to existing technologies will be identified through gap analyses. These extensions may include:

These new features will be supported by an E2E network architecture looking at same time at the best evolution path.

ETSI ISG F5G considers a wide range of technologies, and therefore seeks to actively cooperate with several relevant standardization groups, both inside and outside of ETSI, as well as vertical industrial organizations. ETSI ISG F5G’s work will be oriented to pre-standardization including the identification of technology and standards gaps. Any areas of interest will be referred to the appropriate standardization group and/or organization which may then further enhance or develop the relevant technology specifications.

Specifications

The group published the F5G Release 1. Description of Release 1. 

The group published the F5G Release 2. Description of Release 2.  

For F5G Advanced Releases refer to the Open Area containing up-to-date release descriptions.

A full list of related standards in the public domain is accessible via the ETSI F5G committee page.