Open RAN (ORAN) architecture, evolution & deployment - 5G

About Open RAN (ORAN) architecture, evolution & deployment - 5G

Open RAN (ORAN) is a standard led by the Telcom Infra Project (TIP) and other communities such as O-RAN alliance community. Its aim is to “accelerate innovation and commercialization in RAN domain with multi-vendor interoperable products and solutions that are easy to integrate in the operator’s network and are verified for different deployment scenarios.” Open RAN is a radio access network where hardware from any equipment supplier can be used with software, API, source code, interface etc. from other different suppliers. Shift from

Proprietary to COTS (Commercial off the shelf).

Open RAN split key RAN functions among different nodes to manage

different services and applications (real time and non-real time).

Open RAN is also known as

Disaggregated RAN.

Baseband functionality is split between central unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU). Open RAN is broadly a

Software enabled

Network. Open RAN enables RAN flexibility and development velocity with simultaneous reduction in capital and operating expenses through the adoption of open-source software and continuous evolution through CI/CD.

Virtualization

decouples infrastructure and extracts required functions (such as CU and DU) virtually.

Orchestration

coordinates the lifecycle of virtual network functions to realize required service (e.g., slicing).

Cloudification

is an integral part of Open RAN. Cloud platform enables convenient, on demand access to shared pool of configurable resources in the radio access network through virtualization in Open RAN. Cloudification can be done for CU, DU and near real time RIC nodes. As RAN is disaggregating and moving away from proprietary system, there is an innovation happening by leveraging

machine learning (ML)

to enable more efficiency as compared to conventional RAN by introducing intelligent controllers known as

Radio Intelligent controllers (RIC)

, which can work for real and non-real time services. ML can also help to optimize the features and parameters in the network to make it more efficient. It is a part of self-organizing network feature (SON).

Software defined network (SDN)

helps to enable traffic engineering for access networks.

Multi access edge computing (MEC)

helps to move network resources and functions closer to the users and enable multiple emerging applications having stringent requirement of roundtrip time and processing of huge amount of data at edge. Robust

transport connectivity

is prerequisite to connect disaggregated Open Radio access network.