4.1 Intent concept

28.3123GPPIntent driven management services for mobile networksManagement and orchestrationRelease 17TS

4.1.1 Introduction

An intent specifies the expectations including requirements, goals and constraints for a specific service or network management workflow. The intent may provide information on particular objective and possibly some related details. Following are some general concepts for intent:

– An intent is typically understandable by humans, and also needs to be interpreted by the machine without any ambiguity.

– An intent focuses more on describing the "What" needs to be achieved but less on "How" that outcomes should be achieved, The intent expresses the metrics that need to be achieved and not how to achieve them. This not only relieves the burden of the consumer knowing implementation details but also leaves room to allow the producer to explore alternative options and find optimal solutions. Intent describes the properties that allows a satisfactory outcome.

– The expectations expressed by an intent is agnostic to the underlying system implementation, technology and infrastructure. Area can be used as managed object in the expectations expressed by an intent to achieve system implementation, technology and infrastructure agnostic.

Figure 4.1.1-1

– An intent needs to be quantifiable from network data so that the fulfilment result can be measured and evaluated.

Intent can be categorized based on different user types or different management scenario types.

4.1.2 Intent categorizes based on user types

Based on roles related to 5G networks and network slicing management defined in clause 4.8 in 3GPP TS 28.530 [4], different kinds of intents are applicable for different kinds of standardized reference interfaces.

Figure 4.1.2-1: High-level model of different kind of intents expressed by different roles

– Intent from Communication Service Customer (Intent-CSC): Intent from Communication Service Customer enables Communication Service Customer (CSC) to express which properties of a communication service the CSC may request from CSP without knowing how to do the detailed management for communication service. For example, Intent-CSC can be ‘Enable a V2X communication service for a group of vehicles in certain time’.

– Intent from Communication Service Provider (Intent-CSP): Intent from Communication Service Provider enables Communication Service Provider (CSP) to express an intent about what CSP would like to do for network without knowing how to do the detailed management for network. For example, Intent-CSP can be ‘Provide a network service supporting V2X communications for highway-417 to support 500 vehicles simultaneously’.

– Intent from Network Operator (Intent-NOP): Intent from Network Operator enables Network Operator (NOP) to provide what NOP would like to do for group of network elements (i.e. subnetwork) management and control without knowing how to do the detailed management for the network elements. For example, Intent-NOP can be ‘Provide a radio network service to satisfy the specified coverage requirements and UE throughput requirement in certain area’.

4.1.3 Intent expectations for different types of management needs

Intent expectations for different types of management needs:

– Intent expectation for delivering network and service related object: enables a consumer to express the intent expectation for the object (e.g. network, service, slice) to be delivered by the system. Examples of such intent expectations are:

– "Delivering a radio network in the specified area with specified frequency information, transport information, and radio information (e.g. range of PCI, Cell Id), network capacity and performance information".

– "Delivering a radio service in the specified area with certain service characteristics (e.g. SLS)".

– Intent expectation for network and service related object performance: enables a consumer to express the performance objectives of the object (e.g. network, service, slice) to be assured. Examples of such intent expectations are:

– "Ensure the radio network in the specified area meets certain expected RAN UE throughput objectives (e.g. expected average RAN UE DL throughput, expected percentage of UE with the RAN UE DL throughout less than 5 Mbps)".

– "Ensure the radio network in the specified area meets certain expected coverage objectives (e.g. expected coverage ratio, expected average RSRP)".