# Key Technologies in the Context of Future Networks: Operational and Management Requirements
## 1 Introduction
They take into account the ability for devices to communicate between themselves (Machine to Machine communication--M2M), spectrum and resource optimization (massive MIMO and millimeter wave), the introduction of a device-centric concept and smarter devices (allowed to play an active role in the network). Regarding Network capabilities, one of the main challenges is to create an open, multi-tenant and service-oriented environment to support large amounts of traffic while covering different kinds of Quality of Service (QoS) levels and Service Level Agreements (SLA), in terms of latency, bandwidth or jitter. This environment will allow a flexible reconfiguration of network devices and programmability features based on the device-level, application, user and environment context [7]. Meanwhile, the introduction of intelligence in 5G systems might enable the improvement of the resource use (spectrum, transmission power levels and other radio resources), cost-effective energy mechanisms and flexible cell management (different sizes) [9]. In order to tackle operation and management capabilities and enable ubiquitous connectivity, the research community proposes the introduction of some key technologies, such as SDN [10], NFV [11], Cloud Computing [12], Self-Organized Network (SON) [13] and Machine Learning [14]. SDN is based on the separation of the control plane from the data plane in traditional network devices. This decomposition allows the centralized control of the network with greater automation capacities and it simplifies the management process. For its part, NFV allows the implementation of traditional Network Functions (NF) as virtualized instances, running in a generic hardware. The main advantage of NFV is its improved scalability capacity which, due to Virtual Network Functions (VNF), can be deployed anytime and anywhere in minutes, whereas previously it took more time (compared with traditional functions) [15]. From the technical point of view, SDN and NFV are complementary technologies, and together could facilitate configuration and network customization [16]. For their part, concepts such as Cloud Computing and SON allow the easy deployment of services (on-demand fashion) and enhanced traffic management based on intelligence decisions. SDN, NFV, Cloud computing and SON are enablers that provide business agility and simplify the operation and management tasks. In contrast to traditional mobile systems, future networks will enable operators to control the traffic information (via SDN) in order to use only necessary network functions in a shared virtualized network (NFV and cloud computing). These technologies also allow the reduction of the complexity of planning, configuration and optimization tasks in the whole system, giving the capability to reuse existing infrastructures in a proactive way. The main objective of this paper is to present a full view of the applicability of these technologies as well as the finished and ongoing projects in order to cover the operational and management requirements of the future mobile networks. It also provides the current use cases that will leverage the development of services. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the key-enabled technologies that could be taken into account for the design of future mobile networks. Section 3 presents an overview of the main research, projects and use cases that are based on these technologies. Then, Section 4 describes the challenges and future trends related to the adoption of these technologies and opens a discussion about the future of mobile networks. Finally, the conclusions of this work are presented in Section 5.