Computing workload transport over control plane in next generation cellular networks

An apparatus for a user equipment (UE), the apparatus comprising:

• processing circuitry configured to:
• determine that a compute task is to be offloaded to a radio access network (RAN) for computation by a RAN computing service function (Comp SF);
• encode, for transmission to a RAN centralized unit (CU) control plane (CU-CP), a compute message to indicate the compute task to be offloaded and data of the compute task, the compute message comprising at least one of a RAN compute session identifier (ID) or task ID;
• and
• decode, from the RAN, a compute message response that provides results of the compute task performed by the RAN Comp SF;
• and
• a memory configured to store information of the compute task.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores instructions for execution by one or more processors of a radio access network (RAN) centralized unit (CU) control plane (CU-CP) of a RAN, the one or more processors to configure the RAN CU-CP to, when the instructions are executed:

• decode, from a user equipment (UE), a compute message, the compute message comprising an indication of a compute task to be offloaded to the RAN and data of the compute task;
• in response to reception of the compute message, determine a CU user plane (CU-UP) and RAN computing service function (RAN Comp SF) associated with the CU-UP for computation of the compute task:
• encode, for transmission to the RAN Comp SF, the data via an interface that is dependent on whether the RAN Comp SF is collocated with the RAN CU-UP;
• decode, from the RAN Comp SF, results of the compute task;
• and
• encode, for transmission to the UE, a compute message response that provides the results of the compute task.