The O-RAN ALLIANCE Announces the 5 th Release of Its Open Source Software and An Industry Briefing at MWC Barcelona

O-RAN ALLIANCE:

O-RAN ALLIANCE Industry Briefing, March 1, 2022 at MWC Barcelona

O-RAN ALLIANCE plans to hold its next industry event on March 1, 2022 from 17:15-18:00 CET, hosted at the Deutsche Telekom booth at MWC Barcelona 2022, Hall 3 Stand 3M31. The event will include keynotes from O-RAN ALLIANCE’s leadership and an industry panel discussion.

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5^th Release of Open Software for the RAN – “E” – Delivered by the O-RAN Software Community

The O-RAN Software Community (OSC or O-RAN SC) was formed in partnership with the Linux Foundation in April 2019, to support software development of open RAN solutions available to everyone.

In December 2021, following on the half year release cycle, the OSC published its 5^th open software release dubbed "E". The E release further enhances the traffic steering use case, introduces basic RAN slicing feature and closed loop slice SLA assurance. With these enhanced features and the end-to-end integration of O-RAN architecture components, the E release moves the O-RAN ecosystem one step closer to commercial deployments in mobile networks around the globe.

The main use cases and features delivered in the E release include:

• Slicing-related 3GPP-compliant Performance Measurement (PM) events, which are supported by the O-RAN Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) framework
• O1 Simulator for slicing support
• Two simplified rApps for close loop O-RU recovery and O-DU slicing assurance added to the Non-Real-Time Radio Intelligent Controller (Non-RT RIC) software
• Improved E2 interface Application Protocol (E2AP) software implementation according to updated O-RAN Near-Real-time RIC (Near-RT RIC) E2AP specification version 1.1
• A new RAN Control (RC) xApp added to the Near-RT RIC, which implements a subset of the new E2 Service Management RC to support traffic steering end to end use case
• Software implementation of the O-Cloud reference design and O2 interface defined in O-RAN ALLIANCE’s Minimum Viable Plan (MVP)
• O1/Virtual Event Streaming (VES) disaggregation
• Multi UE and Multi Bearer support

To deep-dive into the E release and to get the open software, please visit the O-RAN Software Community website.

"In addition to the continuous enhancement on the Traffic Steering use case, I am glad to see the community march in a significant way forward by starting the support of Network Slicing. For this, we are thankful to the joint efforts from all the contributors," said Chih-Lin I, the co-chair of O-RAN Technical Steering Committee. "Equally significant, we have established two additional open labs for open source software test and integration, which will further accelerate our feature implementation and delivery activities in the future."

“With Release E, Nokia continues to demonstrate its commitment to O-RAN and advance the maturity of O-RAN specifications,” said Pasi Toivanen, Head of Edge Cloud at Nokia. “This work is supported by Nokia’s open-source contributions to the O-RAN software community Near-Real-Time Radio Intelligent Controller platform, with the simplified REST-based interface for xApps to manage O-RAN E2 subscriptions as well as additional functionality in the xApp framework SDKs, including also the SDL (Shared Data Layer) APIs.”

“We are excited to assist the OSC's delivery of its industry-leading fifth software release, with an expanded slate of applications (xApps) and Interfaces, in alignment with O-RAN specifications," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, and IoT, the Linux Foundation.

“It is exciting to be part of the major steps forward in O-RAN over the last few months. With the support of our business partners, highstreet technologies continues to advance the O1/OAM capability for both O-RAN and OSC. And in 2022 we will have the opportunity to showcase to the world the full benefits of the disaggregated O-RAN architecture when deployed for Small-Medium Enterprise users,” said Alfons Mittermaier, Managing Director of highstreet technologies.

“The growth of the O-RAN Software Community has been remarkable. With the O-RAN SC E release, this milestone will help to further accelerate O-RAN globally and advance the deployment of flexible networks demanding carrier-grade cloud-native infrastructure as we move towards an intelligent systems world fueled by innovative edge applications,” said Gil Hellmann, vice president, Telecom Solutions Engineering, Wind River. “In O-RAN SC E release, Wind River has continued with key contributions to the INF project by enabling more open RAN related features, implementing a framework supporting O2 interface which is pivotal to the cloud infrastructure management and deployment operations.”

“HCL is glad to be a part of the O-RAN ALLIANCE and has significantly contributed to several O-RAN Software Community (OSC) projects. Our collaboration with the OSC aligns with HCL’s Mode 2 strategy of accelerating new Digital Engineering services by leveraging next generation 5G technologies. HCL has made important contributions to the E-release of OSC’s Open software around the hardening of the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) platform, InfluxDB SDL integration, ODU High O1 support for the closed-loop slice SLA assurance automation use case, and 4 xApps (Near-Real-Time RIC Apps). HCL looks forward to further contribution on realizing a Minimum Viable Plan (MVP) from the OSC,” said Rajiv Shesh, Corporate VP, Engineering and R&D Services, HCL Technologies.

About O-RAN ALLIANCE

The O-RAN ALLIANCE is a world-wide community of more than 300 mobile operators, vendors, and research & academic institutions operating in the Radio Access Network (RAN) industry. As the RAN is an essential part of any mobile network, the O-RAN ALLIANCE’s mission is to re-shape the industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. The new O-RAN standards enable a more competitive and vibrant RAN supplier ecosystem with faster innovation to improve user experience. O-RAN based mobile networks at the same time improve the efficiency of RAN deployments as well as operations by the mobile operators. To achieve this, the O-RAN ALLIANCE publishes new RAN specifications, releases open software for the RAN, and supports its members in integration and testing of their implementations.

For more information please visit www.o-ran.org.

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Contact information

O-RAN ALLIANCE PR Contact
Zbynek Dalecky
pr@o-ran.org
O-RAN ALLIANCE e.V.
Buschkauler Weg 27
53347 Alfter/Germany