Tag: O-RAN Alliance

RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) is one of the key elements in the O-RAN architecture, which allows feeding an „external” intelligence into the operations of the radio network. It creates a platform for which the software companies could provide per-use case AI-powered algorithms to make way for, among others, radio resources usage or procedure optimizations. This whitepaper provides an overview of the RIC, discusses its functional split into Non-Real-Time and Near-Real-Time entities along with the concept and examples of rApps and xApps.

RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) is to enable abstracting out part of functionality from the eNB or gNB that was traditionally hosted at the base station in the form of xApps or rApps in the O-RAN architecture. The functions, to which we relate here in the RAN domain include e.g., mobility management or interference management. The decisions are made in the xApps, and RIC then enforces policies towards the RAN elements and controls them using the open interface, namely E2. In this post, we elaborate on the RIC, its functional split, xApps, and rApps.

The goal of Non-RT RIC is to support intelligent RAN optimization by providing policy-based guidance, model management, and enrichment information to the Near-RT RIC function so that the RAN can be optimized. Non-RT RIC works within the management plane and operates on seconds and minutes timescale. In this post, we provide the architecture of the Non-RT RIC and discuss the example applications, called rApps.

In the past couple of months, we delivered several webinars together with Intelefy University related to Open RAN. In this post, you can find the collection of them, in the particular order, where the first one serves as an overview and high-level discussion, whereas the next ones dig more and more into details of O-RAN, as specified by O-RAN ALLIANCE.

Open RAN, as a new approach to building mobile networks, offers faster innovation and the possibility of lowering costs. This whitepaper provides an overview of Open RAN in general, and O-RAN specifically. The O-RAN concept, relevant standardization, and ecosystem players are introduced. The architecture as defined by the O-RAN Alliance is described. Near-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) along with the idea of xApps is discussed. The use cases for O-RAN are overviewed with a particular focus on Traffic Steering.

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.