 levels based on coverage area provide strategies for optimizing the allocation and efficient utilization of radio resources. The expanding diversity of deployment options while considering the ultra-low latency, high reliability, availability, and mobility requirements demands a significant reduction in the overhead and complexity associated with the frequent setup and teardown of the access/ core network bearers and tunneling protocols. However, the changes in the geographical location of point of attachment of a device to the AN, as a result of mobility, would inevita- bly add more overhead with tunneling, in a functionally virtualized network, which could adversely affect the delay-sensitive service experience. The 5G networks support multiple radio access mechanisms including fixed and mobile access, making fixed/mobile conver- gence an important consideration. 5G systems further support the use of non-3GPP access for off-loading and maintaining service continuity. The logical/physical decomposition of radio NFs is required to meet the diverse information transport demands and to align them with the requirements of next-generation services in various use cases. The decomposition of the radio network protocols/functions across layer-1, layer-2, and layer-3 would depend on the degree of centralization or distribution required. It includes placing more functions corresponding to the upper layers of the radio network protocol stack in the distributed entities when high-performance transport (e.g., high bandwidth, high capacity, low latency, low jitter, etc.) is available. Optimized schedul- ing at a centralized entity is critical for high-performance transport across multiple distrib- uted entities (e.g., base stations, remote radio heads (RRHs), 1 etc.). For relatively low- performance transport options, more functions corresponding to the upper layer of the radio network protocol stack is moved to the central entity to optimize the cost/performance metrics, associated with the distributed entities. The choice 