Abstract

For a Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Fifth Generation (5G) core (5GC) enhanced Service Based Architecture (eSBA) network, 3GPP Specifications identify a number of communication models. For example, the 3GPP specification 23.501 defines four communication models, encompassing direct and indirect modes, between a Consumer Network Function (NF) and a Producer NF. Within the indirect modes, a Service Communication Proxy (SCP) performs a range of important activities including among other things load balancing and load distribution of signaling traffic between for example different NF instances of a NF Set or different NF Services of a NF Service set. As a network scales and as traffic complexity grows, a range of challenges may arise encompassing excess or redundant signaling traffic, token invalidation, etc. Techniques are presented herein that address these challenges through the incorporation of an Open Authorization (OAuth) service into a SCP, yielding a number of improvements including, for example, a reduction in the overall number of signaling messages; significant optimization of the signaling between Consumer, SCP and NRF; simplification of the Auth call flow in scenarios where an initial producer instance is changed or multiple SCPs are deployed in a system; among others.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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