The Second Release of O-RAN Software “Bronze” Adds Support for New Key Elements of the O-RAN Architecture and Updates to Align with the Latest O-RAN Specifications

By John (Jack) Murray & Jinri Huang.

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On June 21, 2020 the O-RAN ALLIANCE has announced the “Bronze” release of open source software. This latest release of the O-RAN Software Community (OSC) delivers a significant advance towards an open software RAN that is aligned with the O-RAN ALLIANCE architecture and specifications.

The OSC’s focus is to provide software that delivers on O-RAN’s mission of Open and Intelligent Radio Access Networks. In the Bronze release the software continues to support projects that provide the key elements of the architecture and updates to align with the latest O-RAN specifications.

The architecture, software and documentation for the Bronze release can be found on the OSC website.

You can see some of the software in action by visiting the O-RAN Virtual Exhibition.

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Major advancements to OSC projects in this release include O-DU, O-CU, Non-real-time Radio Intelligent Controller (A1), and OAM (O1). This was accomplished as a result of significant lines of code contributions from multiple companies including AT&T, CommScope, Ericsson, Highstreet Technologies, Institute of Computing Technologies (ICT), Intel, Nokia, Radisys, and Wind River.

Components of the OSC Bronze release

Use cases

Two end-to-end use cases were selected to drive the demonstration of functionality for Traffic Steering and Health Check.

• Traffic Steering use case
• Developed traffic steering and quality prediction xApps
• Developed E2 data ingest pipeline from E2 simulator to perform traffic steering analytics
• Health check use case call flows
• Near-RT RIC self-check (partial)
• O1 near-RT RIC health-check
• A1 near-RT RIC health-check tested

O-DU

An initial O-DU framework has been created.

• A E2 interface initialization and setup between O-DU High and near-RT RIC
• Subscription request/response/indication message support for Traffic Steering use case
• Integration between O-DU high and O-DU low (Initial)

Near-RT RIC

The Near-RT RIC now has support for the current E2 and A1 specifications:

• RAN initiated E2 SETUP with E2 nodes compliant with O-RAN Work Group 3 E2 specification v1.0
• Construction of xApp framework and a HelloWorld C++ xApp
• Construction of Python framework for xApp developers
• E2 setup failure handling (resiliency)
• xApp onboarding
• A1 Flow (Healthcheck #3) implemented and tested

Non-RT RIC

The initial release of an A1 policy manager and an A1 controller:

• Construction of an A1 policy management service (Policy Agent)
• Policy Management GUI and Control Panel to view A1 policies
• Construction of A1 controller and controller APIs
• A1 Flow implemented and tested

xAPP

The addition of several new xApps:

• Construction of xApps for traffic steering (TX, QP, etc.)
• Construction of MCxApp for measurement campaign
• Construction of KPIMON xApp for ingesting E2 data and computing KPIs

OAM

Support for health check and O1 support and dashboards:

• Health check O1 flow #2 implemented
• SMO Deployment based on ONAP Frankfurt with ONAP-SDNC integration

DOC

• Project/module specific documentation

INT

• Partial CI/CD pipeline
• Deployment artifact automation

If you would like to learn more about the O-RAN Software Community or get involved please visit our Software web page.

Thank you to all the contributors to the O-RAN Software Community and our Linux Foundation partner. We look forward to continued growth and success in creating and promoting the next generation of the Radio Access Network.