I would like to share my experiences and knowledge regarding the 5G Core Network, drawing heavily from 3GPP, ETSI, and Cisco standards. I have already written about the general structure of 5G CN and network slicing on my wiki page (https://wiki.kkaragoz.com), which you can explore for background information.
My goal with this 5G NR blog series is to break down the logic behind the technology to make it easily accessible. 5G is the fifth generation of cellular network technology. Each subsequent generation has provided broader bandwidth, lower latency, and a smaller physical footprint. 5G, specifically, introduces innovations such as virtualization, network slicing, and beam-steering/beam-forming (via AAU). With the separation of the control and user planes, latency is reduced to as low as 3ms.
I will be sharing my notes by topic and updating the content over time. I will also update the links below as each related blog post is completed.
Topic Flow
- 5G Evolution
- Network Functions (NFs)
- SA & NSA Deployment Models
- 5G Overall Architecture
- Service Based Architecture (SBA) Principles
- User & Control Planes Essentials
- User Plane Revolution (UPF, CUPS, etc.)
- Control Plane Function (AMF, SMF, PCF, etc.)
- Network Functions – Deep Dive
- Registration & Mobility Procedures
- QoS Workflow (5QI, QoS Flow Mapping)
- PDU Session Establishment Flow
- Network Slicing & Implementation
- IMS Core Integration
- Security Architecture (SEAF, SUPS/SUCI)
- Edge Computing & Latency Optimization
- EPS Fallback
- VoNR Architecture
Other (5G NR Related) – Supplementary
Notes:
I generated the featured image for this post using ComfyUI with the following stack: Flux2-vae (VAE), flux-2-klein-9b-nvfp4 (Diffusion), and qwen_3_8b_fp8mixed (CLIP). Interestingly, I struggled to keep the model from hallucinating text into the composition.