Driving RAN Intelligent Control with Akraino Oliver Spatscheck Don Fendrick

What is the RIC? App App App App App App RIC platform RIC platform eNB Objective: customize RAN functionality for regional resource optimization or new services Policy ML Analytics Multi vendor RAN optimization/customization apps App App App App App App External data sources/lakes RIC platform RIC platform RAN control plane offload Region 1 E2 protocol Region 2 eNB gNB What? Area-wide data and controls UE/cell/DU/CU level L1/L2/L3 measurements UE locations and predicted trajectory UE context info(video, voice, non-GBR data) Per-UE policy-driven control of band/cell/bearer selection, admission control, handover, scheduler Why? Customize RAN with short time-to-market for: Efficient resource usage – improve customer experience and optimize spectral efficiency by using policies/ML to tailor RAN for unique spectrum position and geography based on holistic area-wide network view New RAN services – customize RAN behavior for the needs of specific verticals. E.g., create RAN slices for drones, connected cars, IoT, etc.

RAN Intelligent Controller – a new function introduced by O-RAN Latency for Control Use cases RAN Intelligent Controller O1 Network Intelligence Policy Enforcement Handover Optimisation Radio-Link Management Advanced SON Load Balancing Slicing Policy >> 1 s Wireless Domain Management AI A1 Resource Assurance RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) AI Resource Control 10-100 ms QoS optimization Slicing optimization Mobility optimization 3rd Party application AI/ML for Programmability Platform made avail in Open Source RAN Data Analytics & AI Platform E2 RAN Real-time CU-CP CU-UP 3GPP E1 A1: intent based interface E2: RAN closed loop O1: for data collection and control ORAN NGF-I DU RRU

Why RIC? The RIC takes customization into the RAN Network Optimization Fine grain network optimization customized for each environment Smart factory/industrial IoT Carve out private 5G slice/namespace for business customer on industrial campus Security services Connected Car Quality of Service enforcement to provide low latency and/or high bandwidth to vehicle applications Shipping, Logistics, Tracking, Asset Management Lowering power of IoT devices to enhance battery life Health Care Enforce highest level of network security for sensitive medical data

AT&T & Nokia are driving ORAN/RIC/Akraino in a co-creation partnership welcoming community engagement. Future Community contribution AT&T independent development A1-C Nokia and AT&T Open-Source Co-create Nokia Applications AT&T Applications 3rd party Applications Open Source RIC Platform E2 E2 Nokia 5G RAN 3rd party RAN Nokia independent commercial development Open Source CI/CD Strategic Importance: Akraino is Edge Solution blueprint reusable for Telco, Enterprise and IoT Use cases Akraino Edge Middleware, SDKs and apps enable 3rd party ecosystem play

Driving success in the radio edge through a “cloud appliance” approach Challenge: individual workloads drive far edge cloud business cases leading to platform bootstrap problem. Strategy: “Cloud appliances” allow an edge cloud to be built up incrementally one workload at a time. Package each workload like an appliance, but allowing reuse of common cloud tooling and centralized management. O-RAN radio edge workloads Dashboard vCU Dashboard O1 vCU Dashboard vBBU O1 RIC ”cloud appliance” O1 RIC RIC Integrator Node and workload LCM tooling vBBU “cloud appliance” Regional edge cloud manager OS HW Virt Orchestration Radio edge cloud node (REC) Orch … Nodes scaled to individual workload Other workloads MEC, Cache, Video, Gaming ….

Join us now! RIC code released as part of O-RAN LF project REC code released as part of Akraino Join now! Public