In December 2021, following on the half year release cycle, the OSC published its 5th open software release dubbed “E”. The E release further enhances the traffic steering use case, introduces basic RAN slicing feature and closed loop slice SLA assurance. With these enhanced features and the end-to-end integration of O-RAN architecture components, the E release moves the O-RAN ecosystem one step closer to commercial deployments in mobile networks around the globe.
The main use cases and features delivered in the E release include:
- Slicing-related 3GPP-compliant Performance Measurement (PM) events, which are supported by the O-RAN Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) framework
- O1 Simulator for slicing support
- Two simplified rApps for close loop O-RU recovery and O-DU slicing assurance added to the Non-Real-Time Radio Intelligent Controller (Non-RT RIC) software
- Improved E2 interface Application Protocol (E2AP) software implementation according to updated O-RAN Near-Real-time RIC (Near-RT RIC) E2AP specification version 1.1
- A new RAN Control (RC) xApp added to the Near-RT RIC, which implements a subset of the new E2 Service Management RC to support traffic steering end to end use case
- Software implementation of the O-Cloud reference design and O2 interface defined in O-RAN ALLIANCE’s Minimum Viable Plan (MVP)
- O1/Virtual Event Streaming (VES) disaggregation
- Multi UE and Multi Bearer support
“The growth of the O-RAN Software Community has been remarkable. With the O-RAN SC E release, this milestone will help to further accelerate O-RAN globally and advance the deployment of flexible networks demanding carrier-grade cloud-native infrastructure as we move towards an intelligent systems world fueled by innovative edge applications,” said Gil Hellmann, vice president, Telecom Solutions Engineering, Wind River. “In O-RAN SC E release, Wind River has continued with key contributions to the INF project by enabling more open RAN related features, implementing a framework supporting O2 interface which is pivotal to the cloud infrastructure management and deployment operations.”
To deep-dive into the E release and to get the open software, please visit the O-RAN Software Community website.
