Nokia and AT&T conducted a limited live trial of RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) over the AT&T commercial 5G mmWave network in New York City.
Last year, AT&T and Nokia announced their collaboration to co-develop the RIC software platform, in alignment with the O-RAN Alliance target architecture. The RIC software is available at the O-RAN Software Community.
For the recent trial, AT&T and Nokia ran a series of external applications, called “xApps,” at the edge of AT&T’s live 5G mmWave network on an Akraino-based Open Cloud Platform. The xApps used in the trial were designed to improve spectrum efficiency, as well as offer geographical and use case-based customization and rapid feature onboarding.
Ultimately, the trial achieved its test goals. Both companies tested the RAN E2 interface and xApp management and control, collected live network data using the Measurement Campaign xApp, the neighbor relation management using Automated Neighbor Relation (ANR) xApp, and tested RAN control via the Admission Control xApp – all with zero interruption to the live commercial network.
Mazin Gilbert, VP of Technology and Innovation at AT&T, said: “This successful trial is a testament to what we can achieve through openness and collaboration. Together with the O-RAN Alliance, AT&T and Nokia will continue to develop and contribute to the E2 interface and the RIC platform to help enable an intelligent and flexible 5G network.”
Michael Clever, Head of Edge Cloud Platforms at Nokia, said: “We are excited about the success achieved by the joint AT&T and Nokia team in proving out the RIC over AT&T’s 5G network in such a great city. This represents a major milestone toward the advancement of RAN network intelligence, openness and programmability, with the ultimate goal of improving wireless networks efficiency and end user experience.”
https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/06/18/nokia-and-att-run-successful-trial-of-the-ran-intelligent-controller-over-commercial-5g/
AT&T and Nokia collaborate on open RAN platform
AT&T and Nokia are collaborating on an open software platform under the ORAN Alliance to open up access to 5G radio access networks (RANs). The goal is faster, more flexible service deployments and programmability within a rapidly-evolvable RAN. The ORAN Alliance aims to enable a multi-vendor open ecosystem of interoperable components for the disaggregated RAN.
AT&T said it is commencing development of a software platform for the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), to enable the creation of open source software that is aligned with the O-RAN target architecture. AT&T and Nokia are co-creating the platform code to accelerate the deployment of open source software for the 5G RAN.
Some highlights:
- The RIC platform will provide a set of functions and interfaces that allow for increased optimizations through policy-driven closed loop automation
- The platform will be architected in the form of an extensible real-time microservices framework coupled with a radio information database and key open control plane interfaces for mobility management, spectrum management, load balancing, radio resource control and RAN slicing to name a few.
- Implementations of these functions, sourced from multiple vendors, could be mixed and matched on a single network infrastructure.
The platform will also enable interfaces to third-party applications for enhanced mobility functions such as cross layer optimization and machine learning inferences.
AT&T also plans to increase its engagement in Akraino Edge Stack, a Linux Foundation project focused on building production ready cloud infrastructure for edge deployment in open source. In particular, AT&T has also signed a multiyear co- development agreement with Nokia to further expand Akraino Edge Stack capabilities supporting the needs of the RIC and other edge cloud platform deployments.
