Deploying Scalable and Automated Mobile Networking on the Cloud with Dynamic Edge

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Volume Title

School of Electrical Engineering | Master's thesis
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Date

2025-09-30

Department

Major/Subject

Communications Engineering

Mcode

Degree programme

Master's Programme in Computer, Communication and Information Sciences

Language

en

Pages

83

Series

Abstract

This thesis proposes the development of a cloud-native 5G Core (5GC) implemented on top of a Kubernetes platform and studies its scalability, performance, and resilience. It is driven by the fact that next-generation mobile networks are getting increasingly complex, and flexible, automated, and efficient deployment models are required. A three-physical server Kubernetes testbed was constructed and the 5GC components were containerized and orchestrated into Helm charts. The instances of emulated gNodeB (gNB) and User Equipment (UE) were integrated to create realistic traffic.The Kubernetes-native load balancer LoxiLB was used to balance traffic to reduce congestion in the Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF). End-to-end signalling including registration, authentication, PDU session establishment, and deregistration was validated with controlled experiments. The extensive testing showed that registration and deregistration were very reliable, but that PDU session success declined steeply under heavy load in single-AMF deployments. The integration of LoxiLB significantly increased performance by enhancing registration success rates to 96% and PDU session success rates to 78–85% compared to 88% and 20–32% respectively. These findings confirmed that Kubernetes-based 5GC deployments are feasible and scalable, but their durability depends on intelligent load balancing. Further development should target edge-enabled settings, where the emphasis will be placed on AMF scaling, Kubernetes resource optimization, and the inclusion of more complex 5G capabilities, creating the framework for 6G development.

Description

Supervisor

Mähönen, Petri

Thesis advisor

Costa Requena, Jose

Keywords

next generation networks, Kubernetes, 5G Core (5GC), cloud native load balancing, scalability, network orchestration, 6G evolution

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Attachment notes Description: A Appendices Attachments: Thesis_Khan_Atif_Masud_appendix1.png Thesis_Khan_Atif_Masud_appendix2.png

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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202510208280

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[dipl] Sähkötekniikan korkeakoulu / ELEC