RAN-CN Converged User-Plane for 6G Cellular Networks.

In this paper, we propose a new user-plane (UP) network architecture for 6G cellular networks, where there is no distinction between radio access network (RAN) and core network (CN). We define a new network function (NF), called merged-UP (M-UP), where the UP functions of both RAN and CN sides are merged, thus enabling efficient protocol operations. We also propose an IP flow-based radio quality-of-service (QoS) control scheme to support 6G services with diverse QoS requirements. Based on our network testbed system, we show that the proposed architecture improves the system performance in terms of packet processing load and maximum throughput.