SAFLA: Semantic-Aware Full Lifecycle Assurance for Intent-Driven Networks
Shiwen Kou, Chungang Yang, Mohan Gurusamy · IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking · 2025
Intent-Driven Networks (IDNs) are designed to improve network management efficiency by transforming high-level intents into actionable configurations. Due to evolving user requirements and network dynamics, a semantic gap has emerged between declarative intents and underlying configurations, posing significant challenges to the assurance and reliability of IDNs. Despite promising preliminaries, existing intent assurance approaches, which mainly focus on monitoring intents’ Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), fail to bridge the semantic gap. This gap can result in configurations that technically meet KPIs from a top-down perspective but fail to accurately reflect the original network intent from a bottom-up view, leading to serious security risks and undermining overall objectives. To address this issue, we introduce SAFLA, a semantic-aware framework designed to ensure the intent’s full lifecycle. By seamlessly integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches, SAFLA not only enhances intent assurance by monitoring intent performance but also bridges the semantic gap between high-level intents and low-level configurations. This integration facilitates a self-healing mechanism for IDNs, reducing the need for manual intervention even under evolving requirements and network reconfigurations. Experimental results on software-defined Networking demonstrate the SAFLA’s feasibility and efficiency in intent assurance.