UPF Acceleration App using DOCA

🚀 Overview

This project implements an accelerated User Plane Function (UPF) datapath using NVIDIA DOCA on a DPU platform (BlueField). The goal is to offload packet processing, GTP encapsulation/decapsulation, and routing functions into hardware to greatly improve throughput while reducing CPU load.

This repository demonstrates how DOCA can accelerate UPF in a complete test setup including:

• free5GC as the 5G Core (control plane)
• UERANSIM to simulate UE and gNB traffic
• A DOCA Flow–based UPF application running on the DPU

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✨ Features

• High-performance 5G UPF datapath using DOCA Flow
• Hardware-accelerated GTP-U traffic processing
• Uplink/downlink forwarding between N3 and N6 interfaces
• Integration support for free5GC (UPF offload)
• Simple Makefile workflow: make build, make run, make run-free5gc-core
• Reference topology for end-to-end simulation with UERANSIM

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🧑‍💻 Prerequisites

• NVIDIA DOCA SDK installed on the host
• DOCA runtime + compatible firmware on DPU (BlueField-2 recommended)
• Linux environment with proper drivers
• Installed:
  • free5GC (5G Core)
  • UERANSIM (UE + gNB simulator)
• Basic understanding of Linux networking and 5G UPF concepts

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🔧 Build

make build

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▶️ Run

1. Run the DOCA UPF App

make run

2. Run free5GC (Control Plane)

Follow https://free5gc.org/guide/3-install-free5gc/ Modify run.sh to skip the internal UPF. Then run:

make run-free5gc-core

3. Run UERANSIM

Follow https://github.com/aligungr/UERANSIM Configure gNB/UE properly and run them normally.

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🌐 Topology

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🧠 Demo

Demo.1.mp4

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⚠️ Known Limitations

• Reference/demo implementation, not production-ready
• Requires correct DOCA SDK + firmware versions
• Assumes specific network setup; may require adjustments

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📬 Contact

Author: Stanley Shen

• GitHub: https://github.com/stanleyshen2003
• Repo: https://github.com/stanleyshen2003/upf_accel