"Understanding" Users in Service Experience Assurance

As intelligent technologies become prevalent in the 5G era, it is becoming increasingly urgent to evolve to intelligent, simple, and low-risk telecom networks. Intent-driven technology, a popular concept, applies a deep level of intelligence to the network that reads and aligns with a user's intent. It simplifies the network operation and maintenance (O&M) , improves the experience of end users and enterprises, and holds great promise for application.

With the accelerated development of 5G networks, a variety of services have been generated and user expectations heightened. This means that network assurance is becoming more difficult and higher in cost. The traditional point-to-point assurance method, which relies on manual and expert experience, is no longer able to keep up with the rapid changes in service and traffic. Thus, network assurance becomes increasingly dependent on intelligence technology.

ZTE collaborated with China Mobile Fujian to provide an intent-driven hierarchical service assurance solution to realize "what you want is what you get" and ensure the optimal network efficiency and superior user experience. This solution has won the second prize in the 5G enhanced technology track of the 2022 "Bloom Cup" 5G Application Competition.

Advantages of Introducing Intent-Driven Technology

Since 2019, the autonomous network has gradually evolved from concept to reality, and new technologies have been continuously created and gradually applied to actual networks. In the standardization of the autonomous network, the intent-driven technology as an iconic technology for high-level networks is indispensable.

With the spotlight put on intent-driven technology, the communications industry has been doing theoretical research on it vigorously. Based on a comprehensive assessment of the importance of various communications industry scenarios and network O&M challenges, ZTE and China Mobile Fujian agreed that the intent-driven technology has significant value for service experience assurance.

ZTE's intent-driven hierarchical service assurance solution incorporates key intent-driven technologies, including intent input, intent translation, conflict detection, intent execution, and intent guarding (Fig. 1). The system identifies the desired outcomes after the user inputs a request through natural language, matches different assurance levels according to intents, adopts the optimal assurance policy, monitors the business status in real time, and adjusts the policy accordingly. A user's intention is acquired and translated by introducing the bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BERT) natural language processing model at the intent input and translation sides, while services features are identified and optimized based on intelligent deep packet inspection (DPI) at the intent execution side. By combining these high-level intelligent technologies, the system provides intent-driven hierarchical service assurance to ensure that the network operates as expected.

Using hierarchical and differential scheduling methods, the intent-driven hierarchical service assurance offers not only lifecycle service assurance but also many advantages over traditional assurance methods as shown below.

• Excellent performance: The system monitors the network environment in real time and matches it with appropriate assurance policies to achieve differentiated scheduling of system resources. Based on the priority, policy and algorithm, system resources are allocated to a particular application of the target user, assuring the optimal user experience, improving network performance and reducing network energy consumption.
• Low cost: The system is able to self-adjust and self-optimize based on the user's intention, which greatly improves productivity, reduces the network risks caused by human errors, and effectively reduces network O&M manpower and costs.
• Easy to use: Artificial intelligence is introduced to significantly reduce the user's threshold to work with the system. For common users, they only need to define their intent without paying attention to the procedures, which greatly reduces the complexity of network O&M and makes the O&M system easier to use.

Maximizing Network Benefits

China Mobile Fujian and ZTE applied the intent-driven technology to the traditional network O&M, making the shift from network-centric assurance to user-centric. In the verification of intent-driven hierarchy service assurance in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, it took the network approximately 30 minutes to complete service assurance operations for 10 sites using the traditional service assurance mode and about 5 minutes using the intent-driven technology. This was a noticeable improvement in assurance efficiency.

In order to verify the service assurance effect, the testing team chose four common application scenarios for detailed commercial verification, including Tencent video broadcast, Tiktok live streaming, Minzhengtong QR code scanning and WeChat video conference. Different assurance expectations are set at various assurance levels for these four services in the current network, including throughput increase targets of 100% (Level 1), 50% (Level 2) and 30% (Level 3), and latency reduction targets of 50% (Level 1), 30% (Level 2), and 20% (Level 3). Validations of the combinations of different services and assurance levels showed that, under the intent-driven hierarchy service assurance scenario, service throughput can be increased by up to 760.55% and latency can be reduced by up to 88.70%. Assurance expectations have been exceeded and user experience has been greatly improved.

The commercial verification of intent-driven hierarchical service assurance improves both service experience and O&M efficiency, providing a solid foundation for wider applications of intent-driven technology. In the future, the intent-driven hierarchical service assurance will focus on two major directions: first, expanding the application scale to reduce O&M costs; second, enriching the application scenarios to achieve endogenous interconnection between scenarios and create an intent assurance ecosystem.

Broad Application Prospects

China Mobile and ZTE will continue to cooperate on intent-driven technologies in the future, developing networks that can achieve high profits, high efficiency, simplicity and digital transformation and progressing to high levels of autonomy in the 5G era.

It can be expected that intent-driven technology will play a significant role in the entire telecom network and even in our daily life. With its gradual integration into the autonomous network, the intent driven technology will have large-scale applications with the continuous increase of the corresponding intent rules and enhanced productivity. Assisted by AI capabilities, it will change the progress of the communications industry and even the human society.