Service-based architecture
As 5G has been developed on cloud principles, 5G NFs also follow web-scale application principles, so it is designed in a manner in which the NFs provide and consume services to and from each other. Hence, 5G is based on a producer-consumer model. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has chosen to use the widely adopted Representational State Transfer (REST) model to support communication between various NFs in 5G.
A Service-Based Architecture (SBA) is a system architecture in which the functionality of the system is achieved by applications providing services and consuming services to and from each other. In the context of a 5G core, a service-based interface is between two NFs that provide or consume a service to or from each other.
Figure 3.3 portrays the producer–consumer model of communication. In this example, consider three applications – Application A hosting service A, Application B hosting service B, and Application...
