Presentations from 2nd IEEE Open RAN Summit

The second IEEE SA (Standards Association) Open RAN summit, hosted by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, took place on 9-10 Aug 2023. It covered the topics related to the standardization of Open RAN including O-RAN Alliance, 3GPP, IEEE, various deployment scenarios, testing and integration, Open RAN security, RAN slicing, and RAN optimization among others. 

The videos of the presentations can be viewed on the summit page here or though the video playlist here.

The talk from Dr. Chih-Lin I, O-RAN Alliance TSC Co-Chair and CMCC Chief Scientist, Wireless Technologies on 'AI/ML impact, from 5.5G to 6G' is embedded below:

Related Posts: 

• The 3G4G Blog: Open RAN Terminology and Players
• The 3G4G Blog: O-RAN Introduction for Beginners
• The 3G4G Blog: Accelerating O-RAN Adoption Through Open Source
• The 3G4G Blog: 5G RAN Functional Splits
• The 3G4G Blog: Open RAN Explanation, Videos, White papers and Other Resources 

Accelerating O-RAN Adoption Through Open Source

Telecom Infra Project's Fyuz 2022 conference took place in Madrid from 25 to 27 October 2022. It provided a unique experience by combining technology with gastronomy to stir the attendee’s imagination. It was an event where leaders of open and disaggregated network solutions and the wider telecoms industry gathered to share and discuss recipes for success. Many of the sessions on days 1 & 2 discussed how O-RAN Alliance and TIP work with and complement each other.

On the morning of day 2, one of the breakout sessions discussed how to accelerate O-RAN adoption with the help of open source software. The description of the session as follows:

Modern standards often include code-like sections in their specifications. Open source can provide reference implementation testbeds to inform the specifications and facilitate testing and integrating for ecosystem components. The work of the OSC, ONAP, OAI, and ONF can improve the quality of specifications and facilitate the integration and testing of commercial products. 

The following is a playlist of the videos of the session.

The following is the list of speakers and their topics:

• O-RAN SC Overview: Accomplishments and Future Work by James Li, Deputy Director and Principal Software Architect, Converged Service Solutions, China Mobile.
• RIC APP Track Updates by Ramesh Sriraman, Global Technology Director, HCL Technologies. 
• Accelerating O-RAN adoption with OpenAirInterface by  Florian Kaltenberger, Associate Professor, EURECOM and General Secretary, OAI Software Alliance.
• William Diego Maza, Network Innovation Manager at Orange explains How Open Source Fits into Orange’s Open RAN Strategy.
• O-RAN SMO Containerization by Pavan Samudrala Senior Member Technical Staff at Aarna Networks.
• O-RAN SC INF Project that enables building an Open Source O-Cloud for RAN Infrastructure and is delivered by Gil Hellmann, VP, Telecom Solutions Engineering at Wind River.
• Salvatore D'Oro, Research Assistant Professor, Northeastern University, Boston, USA looks at Experimenting with AI in O-RAN with OpenRAN Gym.

Related Posts: 

• The 3G4G Blog: Open RAN Terminology and Players
• The 3G4G Blog: O-RAN Introduction for Beginners
• The 3G4G Blog: Preparing for Metaverse-Ready Networks
• The 3G4G Blog: Open RAN Explanation, Videos, White papers and Other Resources
• The 3G4G Blog: A quick tutorial on Open RAN, vRAN & White Box RAN
• The 3G4G Blog: 5G RAN Functional Splits 

Open RAN Terminology and Players

When we made our little Open RAN explainer, couple of years back, we never imagined this day when so many people in the industry will be talking about Open RAN. I have lost track of the virtual events taking place and Open RAN whitepapers that have been made available just in the last month.

One of the whitepapers just released was from NTT Docomo, just in time for MWC 2021. You can see the link in the Tweet

NTT Docomo has published 5G Open RAN Ecosystem (OREC) Whitepaper - https://t.co/17CJZuGnTT#Free5Gtraining #3G4G5G #4G #5G #NTT #NTTDocomo #OpenRAN #ORAN #OpenNetworks #Interfaces #Virtualization #Intelligence #TCO #IOT #Integration #RIC #Security #Performance #Deployment pic.twitter.com/1niHXnWr1v

— Free 5G Training (@5Gtraining) June 29, 2021

Even after so much information being available, many people still have basic questions about Open RAN and O-RAN. I helped make an Open RAN explainer series and blogged about it here. Just last week, I blogged about the O-RAN explainer series that I am currently working on, here.

There were some other topics that I couldn't cover elsewhere so made some short videos on them for the 3G4G YouTube channel. The first video/presentation explains Open RAN terminology that different people, companies and organizations use. It starts with open interfaces and then looks at radio hardware disaggregation and compute disaggregation. Moving from 2G/3G/4G to 5G, it also explains the Open RAN approach to a decomposed architecture with RAN functional splits.

If you look at the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) OpenRAN group or O-RAN Alliance, the organizations driving the Open RAN vision and mission, you will notice many new small RAN players are joining one or both of them. In addition, you hear about other Open RAN consortiums that again include small innovative vendors that may not be very well known. 

The second video is an opinion piece looking at what is driving these companies to invest in Open RAN and what can they expect as return in future.

As always, all 3G4G videos' slides are available on our SlideShare channel.

Related Posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: A quick tutorial on Open RAN, vRAN & White Box RAN
• The 3G4G Blog: Open RAN Explanation, Videos, White papers and Other Resources
• The 3G4G Blog: O-RAN Introduction for Beginners
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: NTT Docomo's 5G Network is based on 'Open RAN' Principles
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: NTT Docomo's 5G RAN Infrastructure
• The 3G4G Blog: 5G RAN Functional Splits
• The 3G4G Blog: From traditional RAN to Open RAN - O-RAN: Goals and Challenges
• 3G4G: Open RAN, OpenRAN and O-RAN 

O-RAN Introduction for Beginners

Having been writing about Open RAN for a while, I thought it was important to make simple beginners tutorials for O-RAN. As my full time job* is with a company that is heavily involved in Open RAN and O-RAN, I had an insiders view for doing this project. 

I am making a series of videos for Parallel Wireless to help the industry become familiar with the technology and terminology. The playlist is embedded below:

Four of these are ready and more will be added as and when I get some time. Here is a summary of the videos available. Some of them also have a corresponding blog that I am linking below.

1. Introduction to O-RAN Philosophy: This explains the basics of O-RAN and how O-RAN is transforming the mobile networks industry towards open, intelligent, virtualized and fully interoperable RAN.
2. Introduction to O-RAN Timeline and Releases: This part looks at important timelines from the O-RAN Alliance, understand the O-RAN Software Community (OSC) and the role it plays in O-RAN, and finally, looks at the O-RAN Open-Source Software releases.
3. Introduction to O-RAN Architecture: This part looks at how the basic OpenRAN architecture is evolving into the O-RAN Alliance based Intelligent, Virtualized and Fully Interoperable RAN. It starts with a high-level ORAN architecture and then delves into details of Service Management and Orchestration (SMO), Non-Real-Time (Non-RT) RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), Near-RT RIC and O-Cloud.
4. O-RAN Technical Steering Committee (TSC) & Workgroups: This part looks at O-RAN Technical Steering Committee (TSC) & Workgroups (WGs). The O-RAN TSC decides or gives guidance on O-RAN technical topics and approves O-RAN specifications prior to the Board approval and publication. The TSC consists of Member representatives and the technical workgroup co-chairs, representing both Members and Contributors. Within the TSC, there are 10 work groups, 4 focus groups, Open-Source Community and Minimum Viable Plan Committee. These have all been discussed within the video.
5. O-RAN Workgroup1: Task Groups and Deliverables: This part looks at O-RAN Workgroup#1 (WG1), its task groups and sub-task groups and finally the deliverables produced by WG1.
6. O-RAN Alliance Workgroup 2 and Workgroup 3: Specifications and Other Deliverables: This part looks at O-RAN Workgroup#2 (WG2) and Workgroup#3 (WG3) deliverables.

I am hoping that I will be able to do a few more parts and add a lot more information to the basics so a handy resource is available for anyone interested. Feel free to add links, suggestions, etc. in the comments below. 

Finally, The O-RAN ALLIANCE Story, June 2021 via @TelecomTV - https://t.co/tbU2fsabHi#Free5Gtraining #3G4G5G #4G #5G #OpenRAN #ORAN #ORANalliance #MWC21

— Free 5G Training (@5Gtraining) June 28, 2021

Related Posts:

• The 3G4G Blog: Open RAN Explanation, Videos, White papers and Other Resources
• The 3G4G Blog: A quick tutorial on Open RAN, vRAN & White Box RAN
• 3G4G: Open RAN, OpenRAN and O-RAN
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: Small Cells World Summit Open RAN Webinar
• The 3G4G Blog: From traditional RAN to Open RAN - O-RAN: Goals and Challenges
• Telecoms Infrastructure Blog: NTT Docomo's 5G Network is based on 'Open RAN' Principles 

*Full Disclosure: I work for Parallel Wireless as a Senior Director, Technology & Innovation Strategy. This blog is maintained in my personal capacity and expresses my own views, not the views of my employer or anyone else. Anyone who knows me well would know this.