Category: Trends

The O-RAN Alliance specifies certain use cases with requirements that provide a landscape for the development of xApps. This post provides an overview of the use cases and discusses in more details one of them, namely Traffic Steering. This use case is being developed in various open source implementations as one of the initial practical applications within O-RAN framework.

This post describes the near-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller. RIC is the heart of the O-RAN system, where the intelligence sits allowing to control and optimize the radio network. The RRM algorithms can be deployed at near-RT RIC by means of xApps defined on a per use case basis.

This post discusses the nodes and interfaces defined by O-RAN Alliance. The provided implementation options visualize one of the benefits of O-RAN, namely the implementation flexibility with the open O-RAN architecture. Those options from one side provide the flexibility in implementation and various vendor configurations, but the price to pay for this variety is that you need a way to identify the internal nodes.

Currently, one of the hot topics in the telecoms world is Open RAN. This post provides an introduction to O-RAN, where we set up the scene and show basics like characteristics of O-RAN, the basic building blocks as well as entities involved in the development of this concept.

Since the UN General Assembly in 1987, sustainable development has become the aspiration of modern societies. The development of ICT, has contributed remarkably to global energy consumption, although the translation of the data traffic volume to energy use and greenhouse gas emissions is not straightforward. According to SMART2020 report, the ICT carbon footprint was supposed to increase about 3 times between 2002 and 2020. However, newer reports, corrected these predictions and showed a stabilized trend in the ICT footprint.

In this post we look at published trends and forecasts for our area of interest: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and in particular radio communication. We consider technology trends in 2020, from the following sources: Gartner, Deloitte, Future Today Institute, Forbes, IEEE Communication Society, and Ericsson.