Testing of Federated Autonomics in 5G Multi-Operator Scenarios, as a Use Case for Testbeds Federations for 5G & Beyond

Future Networks in B5G and 6G will continue to expand in scale, complexity and interconnectivity, and will be highly shaped by distributed systems that serve various use cases that go beyond current Use Cases like mMTC (massive Machine Type Communications) and URLLC (Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications). This will be coupled with an increasing demand for autonomy in self-organization and self-management, automation and interoperability on a very dynamic flexible basis in what are called Autonomic/Autonomous Networks (ANs) [1]–[3]. Systems-of-systems architectures will become more relevant as multiple autonomous/semi-autonomous systems adaptively seek to operate and interact with their peers (including symbiotic autonomous systems). The envisioned area of Federated Autonomics, Federated Testbeds and Testbed as a Service (TaaS) allows various SDOs/Fora to share the burden on specifications and standardization of the APIs prescribed by the recently standardized ITU-T Testbeds Federations Reference Model (ITU-T Q.4068). Furthermore, the need to align on roadmaps on Standards for Testbeds Federations by various SDOs/Fora in a harmonized and collaborative way is central to this work, while in general, all various stakeholders can then help contribute to capturing requirements to be fulfilled by the Testbeds Federations APIs. This work offers an opportunity in order to foster such developments. This paper presents Testing of Federated Autonomics in 5G Multi-Operator Scenarios, as a Use Case for Testbeds Federations for 5G & Beyond, and to provide