Intent-driven networks are an essential stepping stone in the evolution of network and service management towards a truly autonomous paradigm. User centric intents provide an abstracted means of impacting the design, provisioning, deployment and assurance of network infrastructure and services with the help of service level agreements and minimum network capability exposure. The concept of Intent Based Networking (IBN) poses several challenges in terms of the contextual definition of intents, role of different stakeholders, and a generalized architecture. In this review, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the state-of-the-art in IBN including the intent description models, intent lifecycle management, significance of IBN and a generalized architectural framework along with challenges and prospects for IBN in future cellular networks. An analytical study is performed on the data collected from relevant studies primarily focusing on the inter-working of IBN with softwarized networking based on NFV/SDN infrastructures. Critical functions required in the IBN management and service model design are explored with different abstract modeling techniques and a converged architectural framework is proposed. The key findings include: (1) benefits and role of IBN in autonomous networking, (2) improvements needed to integrate intents as fundamental policies for service modeling and network management, (3) need for appropriate representation models for intents in domain agnostic abstract manner, and (4) need to include learning as a fundamental function in autonomous networks. These observations provide the basis for in-depth investigation and standardization efforts for IBN as a fundamental network management paradigm in beyond 5G cellular networks.

翻译：意图驱动网络是网络与服务管理向真正自主范式演进的关键基石。以用户为中心的意图借助服务等级协议及最小网络能力开放，为网络基础设施与服务的规划、提供、部署及保障提供了一种抽象化的影响途径。意图驱动网络（IBN）这一概念在意图的语境化定义、不同利益相关者的角色以及通用架构方面提出了若干挑战。本综述全面分析了IBN领域的最新进展，涵盖意图描述模型、意图生命周期管理、IBN的重要性、通用架构框架，以及IBN在未来蜂窝网络中的挑战与前景。我们对相关研究收集的数据进行了分析性研究，重点关注IBN与基于NFV/SDN基础设施的软硬化网络的协同运作。探索了IBN管理与服务模型设计中所需的关键功能，采用不同的抽象建模技术，并提出了一种融合性架构框架。主要发现包括：（1）IBN在自主组网中的优势与作用；（2）需改进以将意图作为服务建模与网络管理的基本策略加以整合；（3）需以领域无关的抽象方式为意图建立合适的表征模型；（4）需将学习纳入自主网络的基本功能。这些观察结果为超越5G蜂窝网络中IBN作为基础网络管理范式的深入探究与标准化工作奠定了基础。