FlexUP: Breaking Up the CU-UP to Speed Up the RAN
The Centralized Unit User Plane (CU-UP) in 5G networks works as an aggregation point of the RAN, facing increasing performance demands yet commonly limited by general-purpose processors. In this work, we present FlexUP, an architecture that offloads CU-UP functions to programmable switches and SmartNICs via a three-path abstraction: fast, medium, and slow. By matching function complexity to the appropriate hardware, FlexUP can improve latency, throughput, and resource efficiency while aligning with the modular and disaggregated principles of Open RAN (O-RAN).
Authors
- Chrysa Papagianni (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2665-6492)
- Gergely Pongrácz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5115-9973)
- Marcelo Caggiani Luizelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0537-3052)
- Francisco Germano Vogt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1467-7146)
- Christian Esteve Rothenberg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3109-4305)
- Victor H. S. Lopes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2335-2973)
Institutions
- Ericsson (Sweden) (SE)
- Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) (BR)
- Universidade Federal do Pampa (BR)
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-09-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3744969.3748447
- Primary Topic
- Green IT and Sustainability
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico