Study on Control Plane (CP) and User Plane (UP) separation of Evolved Packet Core (EPC) nodes
The objective of this Technical Report is to study and perform an evaluation of potential architecture enhancements for the separation of user plane functionality from control plane functionality in the EPC's S-GW, P-GW and TDF to further enable flexible (i.e. distributed or centralized) network deployment and operation.
Specifically, the following aspects are covered:
- Functional separation of the S-GW, P-GW and TDF into control plane and user plane functions, while not affecting the overall functionality provided by these nodes.
- The needed reference points between the separated control plane and user plane functions of the S-GW, P-GW and TDF and the corresponding procedures.
- Impacts to other EPC entities and interfaces that are essential to support the separation of S-GW, P-GW and TDF into control plane and user plane functions, and to enable the flexible placement of the separated control plane and user plane functions for supporting diverse deployment scenarios.