Relief for the AMF – Transferring the Relay Functionality to a New Service

Envisioned future developments in mobile communications are likely going to increase the interaction between Core and (R)AN by the introduction of certain features that enhance dynamic operation. Currently, all traffic between Core and AN is relayed via the AMF in addition to its actual scope. Since the introduction of even more relay traffic is predicted, it might be favorable to include a dedicated service for this as opposed to amplifying the burden on the AMF. Hence, this manuscript targets two purposes: Introducing a dedicated relaying feature for properly managing interaction traffic between Core and attached Access Networks, while simultaneously transferring the already existing relaying tasks that the AMF performs, although this does not belong to its actual purpose. To do so, we analyze the protocol stack as well as the AMF’s specification and discuss the flow of interactions between a Core and AN to derive in which way novel features of recent research influence the processing of messages inside the system and how the architecture is to be modified in order to enable such a relaying mechanism and to meet the demands of certain future features.