Open-source 5G core implementations deploy network functions as always-on processes that consume resources even when idle. This inefficiency is most problematic in private and edge deployments with sporadic traffic. Serverless5GC is an architecture that maps each 3GPP control-plane procedure to an independent Function-as-a-Service invocation, allowing scale-to-zero operation without modifying the standard N2 interface. The architecture decomposes 12 network functions (3GPP Release 15-17) into 31 serverless procedures, fronted by an SCTP/NGAP proxy that bridges unmodified RAN equipment to an HTTP-based serverless backend. Evaluation against Open5GS and free5GC across five traffic scenarios (idle to 50 registrations/s burst) shows that Serverless5GC achieves median registration latency of 406-522 ms, on par with the C-based Open5GS baseline (403-606 ms), while maintaining 100% success across 3,000 registrations. A resource-time cost model shows that the serverless deployment (0.002 GB-seconds per registration) is cheaper than the always-on baseline when the cluster operates below a 0.65 duty cycle, when two or more tenants share the platform, or on managed FaaS platforms up to 595 reg/s. Under worst-case cold-start conditions where all 31 function pods are evicted simultaneously, the system sustains zero failures and converges to warm-start latency within 4-5 seconds.

翻译：开源5G核心网实现将网络功能部署为始终在线的进程，即使在空闲状态下也会消耗资源。这种低效问题在业务流量零散的私有网络和边缘部署场景中最为突出。Serverless5GC是一种通过将每个3GPP控制面过程映射为独立函数即服务调用，在不修改标准N2接口的前提下实现弹性归零运算的架构。该架构将12个网络功能（3GPP Release 15-17）分解为31个无服务器过程，并通过SCTP/NGAP代理桥接未修改的无线接入网设备与基于HTTP的无服务器后端。针对Open5GS和free5GC在五种流量场景（从空闲状态到50次注册/秒突发）下的评估显示，Serverless5GC的中位注册延迟为406-522毫秒，与基于C语言的Open5GS基线（403-606毫秒）相当，同时能在3000次注册中保持100%成功率。资源时间成本模型表明，当集群运行在低于0.65占空比时、存在两个及以上租户共享平台时，或在托管FaaS平台支持595次/秒注册时，无服务器部署模式（每次注册0.002 GB-秒）的成本低于始终在线基线模式。在最恶劣的冷启动条件下（所有31个函数Pod同时被驱逐），系统仍能保持零故障，并在4-5秒内收敛至热启动延迟水平。