Future of Connectivity with Open source and Open RAN

The traditional Radio Access Network (RAN) is a proprietary system that allows interoperation among various telecom operators. It has been a black box system with no scope for open-source and multi-vendor collaboration. However, with Open RAN, there has been a significant shift towards diverse vendors developing the split components of RAN. This has encouraged several open-source contributions in the area. Open RAN achieves performance objectives like efficiency, intelligence, and diversity. Open RAN deployed at the network edge supports use cases with lower latency, like mMTC and URLLC. This is achieved via apps (xapps) deployed at near-RT RIC. Near-RT RIC controls the component of the RAN, optimizes the resources, and is primarily responsible for making decisions in a few milliseconds.

This talk introduces open RAN and its components and further explores three popular deployments of near-RT RIC: O-RAN RIC, FlexRIC, and OAIC RIC. This talk further discusses the possible contributions of Xapps development to security and policy decisions.