Dr. Frank Mademann graduated at and received a Ph.D. in telecommunications engineering from Mittweida University of Applied Sciences, Germany. In August 2009 Frank joined Huawei and holds the position of a systems architect at Huawei’s Wireless Networks business unit. Frank started his career with research and development on GSM data services in 1991 at Siemens Mobile Networks. Since then he was involved in design and definition of all packet domain architectures and services that were specified by SMG and 3GPP. This includes GPRS from the very beginning, the packet domain of UMTS, LTE/SAE and currently 5G.

Frank has been actively involved in the Architecture Working Group of 3GPP since 1999, where he is recognized as a key contributor to technical aspects of all packet domain architectures that were specified by SMG and 3GPP and also contributing to leadership and organizational matters. Having held earlier the position of a Vice Chair, he is the Chairman of 3GPP’s Architecture Working Group since 2015.

Earlier 3GPP systems were specifically defined to enable global communications assuming rather large scale deployments of a few public networks per country. While private deployments were possible and are also existing using current standards it is not necessarily efficient to do so for private networks of smaller scale in terms of users and/or covered area. Already existing 3GPP system capabilities and features as well those that are currently under consideration are introduced with emphasizing on how those may be used to provide a private network or a virtual private network. It is complemented by introducing the means available for dynamic resource sharing between different instances of services, slices and networks.

3GPP defined a few 5G architectural options for addressing different preconditions and approaches of operators rolling out or migrating to 5G deployments. These options as well as the coexistence of 4G and 5G deployments and the migration from 4G to 5G are introduced and compared. Some specifics of the 5G system architecture, like supporting network virtualization, edge computing and enhanced security, are outlined and their effects on network deployment, interworking and migration are assessed.