Introduction
An ‘Open Radio Access Network’, also known as an ‘Open-RAN’ or ‘O-RAN’ is an architecture for building Radio Access Networks (RANs) in the 5G era.
RANs are the part of the mobile network that connects everything. As the name suggests, Open-RAN uses standardized, interoperable, open interfaces, combined with AI, and virtualization, to allow multiple networking technologies to be stitched together to build a mobile network. This is in contrast to the traditional approach, where each network needed to be built by one company to be sure that its constituent parts could interoperate.
O-RAN offers several advantages compared with traditional RAN architectures. These include:
Lower total cost of ownership (TCO): Opening the market to more vendors through interoperable standards increases the amount of available solutions - driving competition among vendors and pushing down prices.
Greater agility, flexibility and scalability: O-RAN’s modular architecture allows it to more easily add or remove components to a network, in order to quickly respond to demands and scale accordingly.
More and faster innovation: Opening the network allows more innovative vendors and developers to enter and enrich the ecosystem, by offering new and/or improved solutions.
Improved performance: A new technology - RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) - which we will cover in more detail later - allows networks to make use of new features, like advanced algorithms that can better optimize the network to specific uses.
Improved automation and observability at scale: Open interfaces will standardize telemetry, driving better observability across multiple vendors. Applications can be built that leverage this data to enable massive automation across thousands of sites.
In this paper, you will learn about the state of the art today in O-RAN – how it is being created, its recent breakthroughs, its major challenges, and how, through collaboration and technical ingenuity, these challenges may be overcome to realize the transformative benefits of this technology.