Introduction to NSA networks

An NSA network is one in which multiple radio technologies are combined to provide 5G coverage. A master node controls the control plane, and the user plane can be split between a master and a secondary node. As mentioned in the introduction, the main aim of introducing NSA networks was to gain speed in deployment, and this was primarily achieved by building on the existing 4G network and reusing its components, thus reducing the time to roll out drastically. Let us take an example of a 5G NSA network, and later, we will go over the various other types of NSA networks.

The following figure illustrates 5G NSA option 3x:

Figure 10.1 – 5G NSA option 3x

This diagram shows what a typical deployment of NSA looks like. There is an existing Long-Term Evolution (LTE) evolved NodeB (eNB), which is connected to an existing 4G Evolved Packet Core (EPC) core network. Now, this is augmented by 5G gNodeB (gNB) New Radio (NR) coverage. Another way to...