BONN, GERMANY-- July 15, 2022 -- O-RAN ALLIANCE:

52 O-RAN Specifications Published since March 2022

O-RAN ALLIANCE has published a new set of 52 specifications for open and intelligent RAN, as the first batch of the O-RAN Release 003 specifications. Among them there are 12 new titles including use cases for Massive MIMO and the R1 interface, E2 interface testing, O2dms interface, Acceleration Abstraction Layer, outdoor macro cell HW, and security specification of 3 different parts of the O-RAN Architecture.

“The O-RAN ALLIANCE has always taken security very seriously. We have recently converted the Security Focus Group into O-RAN’s 11th technical Work Group to allow even more intensive specification efforts in the field of security,” said Andre Fuetsch, Chairman of the O-RAN ALLIANCE and Chief Technology Officer of AT&T. “Security experts from the O-RAN ecosystem have been applying systematic threat analysis on different components of the O-RAN Architecture. Security is becoming an integral part of individual interface or function specifications and there is a security testing specification for proper verification. A systematic and transparent approach to security by the broad O-RAN ecosystem follows best practices seen in other parts of the network to ensure the best possible, most secure solutions.”

Another 40 technical documents have been updated with extensions and new features.

6th Release of Open Software for the RAN - “F” - Delivered by the O-RAN Software Community

In June 2022, following on the half year release cycle, the O-RAN Software Community (OSC) published its 6th open software release dubbed “F”. The F Release continues to improve the support for Traffic Steering and Network Slicing use cases, as well as the alignment with the latest O-RAN specifications.

Main features of the F release include:

· For O-Cloud, the OSC O-CLOUD platform implemented O2 DMS and IMS, and support of 3 types of resource pools (SIMPLEX, DUPLEX, and DUPLEX +) according to the O-RAN O-CLOUD specification
· For Intelligence, the F release delivered:
 - Implementation of A1-Policy & A1-EI functions according to O-RAN specifications
 - Initial R1 interface support such as Data Management Exposure
 - Update of the Near-RT RIC to support E2AP specification v2.0
 - xApp framework for Python with support of the REST-based interface for E2 subscriptions
· For the radio protocol, new features include Intra-CU handover, Idle Mode Paging and HARQ framework in a new version
· The Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) added its management enhancement by supporting the Standard Defined Messages (StdDefine) over the O1/VES interface, while developing the framework for Network Slicing, and support for the O2 interface
· Tools and functions to provide the O-RAN deployment topology view for rApp and CNF deployment

“Congratulations to the team for continuously progressing at the pace of 2-release cycle per year since its inception in 2019,” said Chih-Lin I, co-chair of O-RAN Technical Steering Committee, and Chief Scientist from China Mobile. “One of the key highlights from F release is the implementation of the O-CLOUD with multiple resources, which becomes the steppingstone to Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) xNF deployment for the G release.”

“Ericsson continues to actively engage in the O-RAN ALLIANCE and O-RAN Software Community,” said Per Beming, VP Head of Standard & Industry Initiatives at Ericsson. “We recognise the potential for an ecosystem of multi-vendor rApps which support service providers in deploying, evolving, optimizing and automatically healing the RAN. We imagine a world in which simple multi-vendor rApps are used to build complex use cases and recognize the importance of the R1 interface in enabling this vision. As the main contributor to the Non-Realtime RIC project in OSC F release, Ericsson has focused on the challenges involved in exposing services over the R1 interface, in addition to elaborating an approach to rApp life cycle management.”