The layers of autonomic management in 5G

1. Infrastructure layer: 

All NFs managed autonomously by the framework rely on physical and virtualized

resources in this layer. It encompasses physical and virtualization sublayers. The former

provides an access to physical resources (networking, computing, storage, etc.), while the latter

instantiates virtual infrastructures on top of the physical sublayer. It represents the NFVI as defined

by the ETSI NFV terminology

2. Data network layer: 

This implies an architectural evolution towards the SDN paradigm by decoupling

the CP from the UP. In this framework, the data layer represents a simple data‐forwarding,

which can be either a non‐virtualized or virtualized NF

3. SON control layer: 

This layer includes two internal sublayers: SDN controllers and SON CP

sublayer. SDN/NFV sensors and actuators, which are capable of collecting data from the entire

system and enforcing actions, respectively, are also contained. The SON control layer and data

network layer have associated CPs and UPs of the network that are decoupled in the SDN

paradigm

4. SON autonomic layer: 

To realize the network intelligence, this layer consists of three modules,

i.e., monitor, aggregator and analyzer, autonomic manager, and orchestrator. The monitor and

analyzer

extract metrics related to network behavior, aggregate the collected metrics into health of

network (HoN) metrics, and use these to infer the network status. The autonomic manager is in

charge of diagnosing the root cause of any existing or potential network problems, and deciding

which countermeasure should be conducted. Following the tactical decisions from the autonomic

manager, the orchestrator coordinates the physical and virtualized resources, and manages the

SDN/NFV actuators to execute the decided actions

5. NFV orchestration and management layer: 

This layer is responsible for orchestrating and managing

VNFs via the VNF manager, as well as virtualized resources through VIM. It conforms to the

NFV MANO specified by ETSI 

6. SON access layer: 

This is the external interface that is exposed by the framework. Despite the

fact that internal components may have specific interfaces for the particular scope of their functions,

these components contribute to a general SON API, managed by the SELFNET API broker

that exposes all aspects of the autonomic framework to external systems, such as BSS or OSS and

administration graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The latter enable network administrators to

interact with and configure the SELFNET framework and also observe the complete status of the

network.