1. Driving RAN Intelligent Control with Akraino
Oliver Spatscheck
Don Fendrick

2. 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.

3. 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 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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 ….

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