# Service-Based Architecture for 6G RAN: A Cloud Native Platform That Provides Everything as a Service

## TL;DR

This paper proposes a service-based architecture for 6G RAN to improve customization, efficiency, and scalability for diverse industrial use cases.

## Contribution

A systematic study and design of a service-based RAN architecture for 6G, enhancing flexibility and performance.

## Key findings

- Service-based user plane design improves resource utilization and scalability.
- Service-based RAN enables better customization and personalization for vertical industries.
- Joint optimization with the core network enhances overall network efficiency.

## Abstract

The 5G network’s commercialization has revealed challenges in providing customized and personalized deployment and services for diverse vertical industrial use cases, leading to high cost, low resource efficiency and management efficiency, and long time to market. Although the 5G core network (CN) has adopted a service-based architecture (SBA) to enhance agility and elasticity, the radio access network (RAN) keeps the traditional integrated and rigid architecture and suffers the difficulties of customizing and personalizing the functions and capabilities. Open RAN attempted to introduce cloudification, openness, and intelligence to RAN but faced limitations due to 5G RAN specifications. To address this, this paper analyzes the experience and insights from 5G SBA and conducts a systematic study on the service-based RAN, including service definition, interface protocol stacks, impact analysis on the air interface, radio capability exposure, and joint optimization with CN. Performance verification shows significant improvements of service-based user plane design in resource utilization and scalability.