Last year, the Open Networking Foundation set up SD-RAN, an initiative to develop a platform for a key element of Open RAN, the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC).
At the time, the ONF insisted it was not breaking with the O-RAN Alliance and would use that body’s RIC specs as the framework for its own effort, but it wanted to push forward a developer ecosystem for the xApps that will run on top of the RIC, especially in the challenging near-real time environment.
It also commented that O-RAN had become very vendor-driven, while ONF – which has its own engineering teams rather than relying entirely on those of members – would stick firmly to operator-defined specs and requirements.
It has now announced the first results of its RIC project, working with AirHop, Facebook and the Telecom Infra Project on a RAN automation demonstration based on its implementation of O-RAN RIC. The demo, it said, “supports a broad range of automation services in the form of software services, called xApps by O-RAN, that run on the RIC”.
AirHop, a long-time player in the self-optimizing network (SON) market, and a supplier to Rakuten’s Open RAN project, supplied the first xApp to be tested with the ONF’s SD-RAN RIC.
Facebook provided a software developers’ kit (SDK) that exposes simplified APIs that conform to O-RAN specifications. All the partners will work together, and with other players and the O-RAN Alliance, to standardize the APIs that link xApps to the RIC platforms, allowing xApps from any vendors to run on a standards-based RIC.