Driving RAN Intelligent Control

with Akraino
Oliver Spatscheck
Don Fendrick
 What is the RIC?
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 Region 1 E2 protocol Region 2
plane offload

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
O1 RAN Network Policy Enforcement
>> 1 s Wireless Domain Management AI Intelligence
Intelligent Handover Optimisation

A1 Controller Resource
Radio-Link Management

Assurance Advanced SON

RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) AI Load Balancing
Resource
10-100 ms QoS Slicing Mobility 3rd Party Control Slicing Policy
optimization optimization optimization application

RAN Data Analytics & AI Platform - AI/ML for Programmability

- Platform made avail in
E2 Open Source

RAN
Real-time CU-CP CU-UP
3GPP E1 - A1: intent based interface
- E2: RAN closed loop
- O1: for data collection and
ORAN NGF-I control
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

4
 AT&T & Nokia are driving ORAN/RIC/Akraino in a co-creation partnership
welcoming community engagement.
Future Community
AT&T independent contribution
A1-C
development
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 Open Source

commercial development CI/CD

Strategic Importance:

Akraino is Edge Solution Akraino Edge Middleware,

blueprint reusable for Telco, SDKs and apps enable 3rd
Enterprise and IoT Use cases party ecosystem play
 Driving success in the radio edge through a “cloud appliance” approach
Challenge: individual workloads drive Strategy: “Cloud appliances” allow an Package each workload like an
far edge cloud business cases leading edge cloud to be built up incrementally appliance, but allowing reuse of
to platform bootstrap problem. one workload at a time. common cloud tooling and centralized
management.

O-RAN radio edge workloads

Dashboard Dashboard Dashboard

O1 O1 RIC ”cloud
O1
vCU vCU appliance”
RIC
RIC vCU vBBU Integrator

Regional edge Node and workload vBBU “cloud

cloud manager LCM tooling appliance”
Orchestration
Orchestration

…
Virt
Virt
Orch

Virt OS
OS
OSHW Radio edge
HW
HW cloud node (REC) 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