The O-RAN Software Community (SC) Documentation.

Welcome to O-RAN SC F Release Documentation Home

O-RAN Alliance (https://www.o-ran.org/) members and contributors have committed to evolving Radio Access Networks (RAN) around the world. Future RANs will be built on a foundation of virtualized network elements, white-box hardware and standardized interfaces that fully embrace O-RAN’s core principles of intelligence and openness. An ecosystem of innovative new products is already emerging that will form the underpinnings of the multi-vendor, interoperable, autonomous RAN, envisioned by many in the past, but only now enabled by the global industry-wide vision, commitment and leadership of O-RAN Alliance members and contributors.

O-RAN SC is partnering with the O-RAN Alliance and Linux Foundation to support the software development for an open RAN solution that is available to everyone. The community will align with the architecture and specifications that are created in the O-RAN Alliance working groups to create a working software solution to enable an open and intelligent 5G RAN.

New featuresin H release:

Near-Real-time RIC X-APPs (RICAPP)

RICAPP H Release Feature Scope:

New HW-Rust xApp to support RUST framework.
New ad-cell xApp to detect cell level anomaly.
RC xApp - GRPC interface support on RC xApp
Bouncer xApp - RIC Benchmarking new features addition.
KPIMON-GO xApp – New Version

Near-Real-time RAN Intelligent Controller Platform (E2 Interface) (RICPLT)

RICPLT H Release Feature Scope:

E2 reset (from E2 node to RIC), E2 subscription delete required, A1 policy status notifications
Preparation of feature for I release, e.g., include xApps in subscription delete required decision

For the H release of the near-RT RIC we do only limited integration testing: only the use cases: deploy RIC, deploy xApp, make E2 connection, get list of A1 policies has been tested.

Non-Real-time RIC (A1 Interface) (NONRTRIC)

NONRTRIC H Release Functions:

Consolidated & Improved RAN PM data exposure in new repo for RAN PM functions
Adds 4 new services for RAN PM processing Lots of work on deployment scripts/charts, testing, CI, and documentation
(R1) Service Exposure & Management (SME)
CAPIF Aligned Service Registry & Discovery Continued work of Service execution platform extensions (K8s, Istio, Keycloak, OPA, Gateway) to enable and enforce service isolation & exposure Controlled access & exposure of service to/from rApps
(R1) Data Management & Exposure (DME)
Small updates to Information Coordination Service – studying alignment with R1 proposals File-based PM data → Kafka/InfluxDB/Minio Including parsing, filtering & delivery ref. PM Data exposure above
rApp Management
Started work on a new rApp Manager functions – more in next release LCM for rApps: Building on ONAP “Automation Composition” model & platform to implement rApp use cases “KServe Participant” and “A1 Policy Participant” Overlap with Service Exposure work to examine role of an rApp Manager to support controlled access to and exposure of Services Overlap with Data Exposure work to examine role of an rApp Manager to support controlled access to and exposure of Data types
Continued A1-Policy & A1-Enrichment-Information evolution (& R1-A1)
A1-Policy work in ONAP (continues in ONAP London) - candidate for R1-A1(P) A1-EI management as part of DME - candidate for how to include A1-EI in R1-DME ref. DME work above
Demonstrated ASD-based CNF LCM
ONAP SO CNFM in standalone mode
Sample use cases (rApps)
Requirements Drivers for rApp/R1 development
Testing, Maintenance & Housekeeping
3PP update – esp. Springboot 3 & JDK 17 Function Test & Integration Test environment, lots of new test cases, and new ONAP L & OSC H test profiles Continue integration, deployment & configuration of SMO/Non-RT-RIC related functions & usecases in OSC Integration environment. Project coordination, Documentation, Delivery, Reporting, Cross-project alignment, Community demos, O-RAN Standardization support, etc.

OAM (O1 Interface)

OAM H Release Feature Scope:

Updates according to O-RAN Operations and Maintenance Interface Specification 8.0 (O-RAN.WG10.O1-Interface.0-v08.00) October 2022
Please see H-Release for further details
Hardening the solution by introducing a “SMO-gateway”.
Add a FlowManagement Component.

O-RAN Central Unit (OCU)

OCU H Release Feature Scope:

Radisys Commercial CU is being used as a test fixture for E2E testing
This is containerized CU image with following
Release version 2.5.3 NG interface with SOCKET mode and veth type F1 interface with SOCKET mode and veth type E2 interface support Software Crypto

O-DU High

O-DU High H Release Feature Scope:

Odu High interfaces alignment to the latest specification & New design with multi-scheduler algorithm support
Status: Completed Epic: https://jira.o-ran-sc.org/browse/ODUHIGH-488
Integration of ODU-High with intel L1
Status: Spread over multiple releases, to be continued in the next release Epic: https://jira.o-ran-sc.org/browse/ODUHIGH-475
Inter CU Handover
Status: Completed Epic: https://jira.o-ran-sc.org/browse/ODUHIGH-463
E2 interface enhancement
Status: Completed Epic: https://jira.o-ran-sc.org/browse/ODUHIGH-510

O-DU Low

O-DU Low H Release Feature Scope:

The O-DU Low H release is the same as the F Release and G Release that added support for Massive MIMO, URLLC and it is based on the commercial FlexRan 21.11 release.

The O-DU Low H, G and F Release code is an Intel contribution in collaboration with Tieto Poland for the source code releases in the O-RAN gerrit and for the binary blobs contributed via GitHub.

For the documentation preparation of the H, F and G release Intel worked with collaboration from Fransiscus Bimo and Professor Ray-Guang Cheng from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST).

The H, G and F release are being used for end to end testing and it is based on the E maintenance release that was used for the 2021 November US O-RAN Plugfest and tested in conjuction with 2 stack partners and 2 different Test equipment vendors. The Front Haul Interface was also tested for compliance using Keysight’s Front Haul Test equipment.

Container images and deployment instructions are to be provided later

Simulators (SIM)

SIM H Release Feature Scope:

Updated simulated O-RU YANG models according to latest release (March 2023) OpenFronthaul Management Plane specification
Implement the Monitoring NETCONF connectivity feature for the O-RUs, according to chapter 6.7 (Monitoring NETCONF connectivity) in O-RAN.WG4.MP.0-R003-v11.00
Created a mechanism to locally build simulated O-DU with 3GPP YANG models
No new contributions for the E2 Simulator

Infrastructure (INF)

INF H Release Feature Scope:

Enable the 2 AIO severs with additional worker nodes deployment scenario
Major components upgrade
Implement the O2 interface as the MVP

Integration and Test (INT)

INT H Release Feature Scope:

Convert existing RICPLT/RICAPP Robot test cases in it/test repo to be executed with XTesting, which should automate the deployment of RIC platform, onboarding an xApp, and execute test cases all together.
Wind River may contribute XTesting test cases on the o2 repo
Specific to the Asia Pacific Open Lab:
Completing E2 setup procedure between OSC Near-RT RIC and OAI gNb. Incorporate E2AP v2 in OAI CU for connection between OAI CU and OSC Near-RT RIC. Verify data exchange between netconf and ves between OAI CU and OSC SMO. Testing C-plane in F1 interface connection between OAI CU and OSC DU.

Service Management and Orchestration (SMO)

SMO H Release Feature Scope:

Automated API Conformance testing
Alignment with O-RAN O2 DMS ETSI NFV Profile.
Refresh SDNR image to the latest on SMO O1 project.

AI/ML Framework

AI/ML Framework H Feature Scope:

Diversify training data source for Training host
Obtaining training data from DME in Non-RT RIC Creating Feature groups with data source and feature information
Kserve adapter
Deploy and manage AI models in Near-RT RIC/Non-RT RIC Integrate Inference host with O-Cloud( RICDMS ) and Management Functions of RIC.
Training pipeline Enhancement
Provide sample pipelines by default
AIMLFW feature enhancements
Options for edit, retrain and delete training jobs

Please find some guidance here on the content of O-RAN SC documentation.

O-RAN Architecture Overview

O-RAN SC architecture follows O-RAN Alliance defined architecture.

Figure 1: O-RAN architecture overview

In the O-RAN architecture, the radio side includes Near-RT RIC, O-CU-CP, O-CU-UP, O-DU, and O-RU. The management side includes Service Management and Orchestration Framework that contains a Non-RT-RIC function.

Components Definition

For the purposes of the present document, the terms and definitions given in 3GPP TR 21.905 [1] and the following apply. A term defined in the present document takes precedence over the definition of the same term, if any, in 3GPP TR 21.905 [1].

near-RT RIC: O-RAN near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller: a logical function that enables near-real-time control and optimization of O-RAN elements and resources via fine-grained data collection and actions over E2 interface.

non-RT RIC: O-RAN non-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller: a logical function that enables non-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources, AI/ML workflow including model training and updates, and policy-based guidance of applications/features in near-RT RIC.

NMS: A Network Management System

O-CU: O-RAN Central Unit: a logical node hosting RRC, SDAP and PDCP protocols

O-CU-CP: O-RAN Central Unit – Control Plane: a logical node hosting the RRC and the control plane part of the PDCP protocol

O-CU-UP: O-RAN Central Unit – User Plane: a logical node hosting the user plane part of the PDCP protocol and the SDAP protocol

O-DU: O-RAN Distributed Unit: a logical node hosting RLC/MAC/High-PHY layers based on a lower layer functional split.

O-RU: O-RAN Radio Unit: a logical node hosting Low-PHY layer and RF processing based on a lower layer functional split. This is similar to 3GPP’s “TRP” or “RRH” but more specific in including the Low-PHY layer (FFT/iFFT, PRACH extraction).

O1: Interface between management entities in Service Management and Orchestration Framework and O-RAN managed elements, for operation and management, by which FCAPS management, Software management, File management shall be achieved.

O1*: Interface between Service Management and Orchestration Framework and Infrastructure Management Framework supporting O-RAN virtual network functions.

xAPP: Independent software plug-in to the Near-RT RIC platform to provide functional extensibility to the RAN by third parties.

O-RAN SC license

The O-RAN Software initiatives are focused on aligning a software reference implementation with the O-RAN Alliance’s open architecture and specifications. The aim is to achieve a solution that can be utilised to unify and accelerate the evolution and deployment in the RAN. The community has been setup to promote open source but also to address wireless technology support for essential patents. more infomation can be found at https://www.o-ran.org/software.

Apache 2.0 License

The O-RAN Software Community is a Linux Foundation project supported and funded by O-RAN to lead the implementation of the O-RAN specifications in Open Source. The project leverages the Apache Version 2 License.

O-RAN Software License

The O-RAN Specification Code Project is an O-RAN Alliance project. Its objective is to allow contributions that will acknowledge essential patents. The project leverages the O-RAN Software License.

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

All documentation in O-RAN SC will be received and made available by the Specification,Code Project under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Release-Notes

This document provides the release notes for O-RAN SC.

Version history
Release Summary

Version history 

Date	Ver.	Author	Comment
2019-11-31	Amber	CMCC	Amber Release
2020-06-21	Bronze	CMCC	Bronze Release
2020-12-21	Cherry	CMCC	Cherry Release
2021-07-15	D	CMCC	D Release
2021-12-15	E	CMCC	E Release
2022-7-06	F	CMCC	F Release
2022-12-16	G	CMCC	G Release
2023-7-04	H	CMCC	H Release

Release Summary 

RAN Intelligent Controller Applications (RICAPP) features 

GS-lite, which is an open-source, real-time, low-latency, high-throughput stream processing engine. It is a fork of cask/tigon (https://github.com/cdapio/tigon) maintained to serve the needs of RIC applications (currently MC xApp).

GS-lite Stream Processing Engine Release-notes

The HelloWorld(HW) xAPP repository contains open-source code for a prototype xAPP for near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller.

HelloWorld xAPP Release-notes

The KPI Mon xAPP, which supports full closed loop control for CuCpResourceStatusReport from multiple gNBs and stores the metrics in Redis DB.

KPI monitoring Release-notes

QoE Predictor (QP) is an Xapp in the Traffic Steering O-RAN use case.

QoE Predictor xApp Release-notes

The Acumos xAPP adapter, which contains the code needed to use an existing Acumos microservice as an O-RAN xAPP, by providing “glue” that listens and speaks RMR protocol and translates these into calls to the Acumos microservice, which is co-deployed in the same pod as the adapter.

RIC APP ML Release-notes

The MC xAPP, which supports calculation of a number of metrics and KPIs based on X2 messages received from UEEC.

RIC Measurement Campaign (MC) xApp Release-notes

Anomaly Detection (AD) is an xApp in the Traffic Steering O-RAN use case.

Anomaly Detection xApp Release-notes

This repository contains open-source code for a prototype HW-go xAPP for near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller which makes use of go Xapp Framework.

HW-go xAPP Release-notes

Near Realtime RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) features 

The RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) Platform’s A1 Mediator component listens for policy type and policy instance requests sent via HTTP (the “northbound” interface), and publishes those requests to running xApps via RMR messages (the “southbound” interface).

A1 Release-notes

Asn1-documents, which contains a description of the E2 used in the near-RT RIC implementation under O-RAN-SC.

ASN.1 Documents Release-notes

DBAAS, which is the needed elements to deploy database as a service (Dbaas) to kubernetes. Dbaas service is realized with a single container running Redis database. The database is configured to be non-persistent and non-redundant.

DBAAS Release-notes

Golang, which is an implementation of a structured logging library with Mapped Diagnostics Context (MDC) support.

GOLOG Release-notes

Jaegeradapter, which contains jaeger configuration files. This first version only supports configuration for a jaeger-all-in-one deployment.

Jaegeradapter Release-notes

LOG, which is a thread-safe logging C API library with Mapped Diagnostics Context (MDC) support.

LOG Release-notes

PYLOG, which implements a structured logging library with Mapped Diagnostic Context (MDC).

PYLOG Release-notes

Shared Data Layer, which provides a lightweight, high-speed interface for accessing shared data storage. The purpose is to enable utilizing clients to become stateless, conforming with, e.g., the requirements of the fifth generation mobile networks.

Shared Data Layer (SDL) in C++ Release-notes

Shared Data Layer, which provides a lightweight, high-speed interface for accessing shared data storage. The purpose is to enable utilizing clients to become stateless, conforming with, e.g., the requirements of the fifth generation mobile networks.

Shared Data Layer (SDL) in Go Release-notes

Streaming Protobufs, which provides a Protobuf schema for selected set of X2 Application Protocol messages.

Streaming Protobufs Release-notes

Tracelibcpp library, which implements a function for creating a configured tracer instance. It hides the underlaying tracer implementation from the application. The library currently supports only Jaeger (https://www.jaegertracing.io/) C++ client (https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger-client-cpp) tracer implementation.

Tracelibcpp Release-notes

Tracelibgo library, which implements a function for creating a configured tracer instance. It hides the underlaying tracer implementation from the application. The trace library currently supports only Jaeger (https://www.jaegertracing.io/) golang client (https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger-client-go) tracer implementation.

Tracelibgo Release-notes

The VESPA manager ,which uses the VES Agent (https://github.com/nokia/ONAP-VESPA) to adapt near-RT RIC internal statistics’ collection using Prometheus (xApps and platform containers) to ONAP’s VES (VNF event streaming).

Vespamgr Release-notes

xapp-frame is a simple framework for rapid development of RIC xapps, and supports various services essential for RIC xapps such as RESTful APIs, RMR (RIC Message Routing), database backend services and watching and populating config-map changes in K8S environment

xapp-frame Release-notes

Non-RealTime RAN Intelligent Controller (NONRTRIC) features 

In Bronze release, Non-RT RIC containes Policy Agent, Control Panel and A1 Simulator.

Non-RT RIC Release-notes

Operations and Maintenance (OAM) features 

OAM which provides reference implementation according to the O-RAN OAM (WG1) documents.

The O-RAN SC RIC Dashboard provides administrative and operator functions for a radio access network (RAN) controller. The web app is built as a single-page app using an Angular (version 8) front end and a Java (version 11) Spring-Boot (version 2.1) back end.

RIC Dashboard Release-notes

O-RAN Central Unit (OCU) features 

5G NR which is a RAN Software Reference Design for a 5G protocol stack

O-RAN Distributed Unit High Layers (ODUHIGH) features 

O-DU Layer 2, which is O-DU layer intilaizations and exchange of F1 Setup Request, F1 Setup Response, GNB DU Config Update and GNB DU Config Update ACK between the ODU and CU STUB.

O-DU Layer 2 Release-notes

O-RAN Distributed Unit Low Layers (ODULOW) features 

O-DU Layer 1, which is the O-RAN FHI Lib built on top of DPDK to perform U-plane and C-plane functions according to the ORAN Fronthaul Interface specification between O-DU and O-RU. S-Plane support requires PTP for Linux version 2.0 or later The management plane is outside of the scope of this library implementation.

O-DU Layer 1 Release-notes

Infrastructure (INF) features 

RTP O2 repository implements a reference O2 IMS and DMS service to expose O2 interface to SMO.

RTP O2 Release-notes

Realtime Platform, which implements a real time platform to deploy the O-CU and O-DU components.

Realtime Platform Release-notes

Integration and Testing (INT) features 

IT-DEP hosts deployment and integration artifacts such as scripts, Helm charts, and other files used for deploying O-RAN SC software.

IT-DEP Release-notes

IT-DEV which integrates artifacts for developing Near Realtime RAN Intelligent Controller applications (xApps).

IT-DEV Release-notes

IT-TEST, which contains: Test automation scripts written using the robot frameworkDeployment scripts for a dev-test 1-node Kubernetes cluster. A functional simulator for the E2 protocol that acts as gNB used to test the RIC. A workload generator that is used to benchmark the RIC

IT-TEST Release-notes

IT-DEV includes the initial commit of the OTF platform code. Applications include otf-frontend, otf-service-api, otf-camunda, and several virtual test head microservices (ping, ssh, robot, ric). In addition setup documentation and installation guides are included to build docker containers and helm charts for deployment.

IT-Otf Release-notes

Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) features 

SMO O1 repository is for the implementation, installation, and use of the O1 interface of SMO. It uses the Software Defined Netowrk (SDN) Controller for Radio (SDNR) to implement the O1 interface. The software comes in the form of Docker containers that are setup using docker-compose.

SMO O1 Release-notes

The O1/VES interface supports the monitoring side of SMO. The diagram below shows how the Network Elements interact with the O1/VES interface in the SMO.

SMO-VES Release-notes

SMO-O2 repository is for the implementation, installation, and use of the O2 interface of SMO. It uses the OpenStack Tacker to implement the O2 interface.

SMO-O2 Release-notes

O-RAN SC Projects

RAN Intelligent Controller Applications (RICAPP)

RICAPP includes open source sample xAPPs and platform applications that can we used for integration, testing, and demonstrations.