Drift handling and enegy evaluation for open radio access networks

Abstract

AS the industry moves into the next phases of the 5G deployment, operators face the need to deliver a greater number of new services such as high speed, lower latency, and newlinestrict Quality of Service (QoS). The Next Generation Radio Access Networks (NG-RAN) ar- chitecture provides intrinsic virtualization, and cloud-native frameworks pave the way for not just hardware-software disaggregation but also vendor disaggregation, supporting best-of-breed open RAN solutions. newline newlineSeveral consortia, such as Operator Defined Open and Intelligent Radio Access Networks (O- RAN), Telecom Infra Project (TIP), Open RAN Policy Coalition, Small Cell Forum, etc., are promoting disaggregated RAN architectures for Beyond-fifth generation (B5G) networks. These architectures are expected to bring many benefits, such as enabling more market com- petition and customer choice, lower equipment costs, and improved network performance. To address the diverse use cases, the industry realized a strong need to introduce functional split options for better standardization of RAN. In addition to the split architecture, the open RAN also focuses on two key considerations, such as openness and intelligence, for enhancing the RAN architecture. newline newlineOpenness allows multi-vendor interoperability in RAN technologies, specifically by creating open interfaces among the RAN components: central unit (CU), distributed unit (DU), and ra- dio unit (RU). The logical separation among the RAN components allows for the deployment of various functions in different sections of the network with different hardware platforms. Open- ness brings several advantages capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) savings, more innovation, and competition in the market. Whereas, the intelligence is an essential component for B5G services due to the rise in network complexity and the expo- nential growth in the amount of data transmitted across networks.