- Jan 2022
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spectrum.ieee.org spectrum.ieee.org
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Of the big three vendors, only Huawei is not a member, citing its belief that Open RAN systems cannot perform as well as the company's proprietary systems
It will be important to follow China's attitude towards ORAN. Currently, it seems ORAN is not as efficient as proprietary - but this is likely to change. At some point, Huawei model may become less 'sellable' (ultimately, operators around the world decide on profit, especially when difference is big). Will Chinese industry ultimately turn to ORAN to some extent? Also, will China try to 'emphasise' some of the weaknesses of ORAN, eg. through cyberattacks against its virtualised elements? ||JovanK|| ||sorina|| ||AndrijanaG||
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Open RAN is here to stay.
This is certain. It provides business advantages to operators, allows blooming new market, reduces dependencies, and has political impact. It will unbundle RAN dependencies and supply chain. Yet, it has drawbacks that we have to study.
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When an operator buys an end-to-end system from Nokia or Ericsson or Huawei, it also knows it can depend on that vendor to support the network when problems crop up. Not so with Open RAN deployments, where no single vendor is likely to claim responsibility for interoperability issues. Larger operators will likely be able to support their own Open RAN networks, but smaller operators may be reliant on companies like Mavenir, which have positioned themselves as system integrators.
Another possible drawback of ORAN: ensuring interoperability of various vendors, in contrast to responsibility of big vendors (similar challenge to open source software). Open question: how can this impact security (similar to open source security issues)?
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Rakuten, in particular, faced some initial setbacks when its Open RAN network's performance didn't match the performance of a traditional end-to-end system
(Current) Drawback of ORAN: Performance
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After a mandate from the British government to strip all Huawei components from wireless networks, England-based Vodafone is replacing those components in its own networks with Open RAN equivalents. Because of similar mandates, local operators in the United States, such as Idaho-based Inland Cellular, are doing the same.
Politics influence uptake of ORAN as well: eg. Huawei ban
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RAN Intelligent Controller. The RIC collects data from the RAN components of dozens or hundreds of base stations at once and uses machine-learning techniques to reconfigure network operations in real time.
Benefits of software-driven RAN: fine-tuning the performaces in real time, including though AI
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Every generation of our networks basically rely on special-purpose hardware with tightly coupled software. So every time we need to have an upgrade, or new release, or new fractional release, it takes years." In order to move away from a hardware-centric attitude, the O-RAN Alliance is also encouraging the wireless industry to incorporate more software into the RAN. Software-defined networks, which replace traditional hardware components with programmable software equivalents, are more flexible.
Another benefit of ORAN for operators: moving away from hardware dependencies and lack of flexibility to update the network, towards software-driven RAN which are more flexible, updatable, and allow options for re-calibrating the network in realtime
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The goal in creating open standards for multiple kinds of splits is that operators can then purchase better-tailored components for the specific kind of network they're building. For example, an operator might opt for Split 8 for a large-scale deployment requiring a lot of radios. This split allows the radios to be as “dumb," and therefore cheap, as possible because all of the processing happens in the centralized unit.
Benefit of ORAN options for operators: they can fine-tune network architecture, vendors, dependencies, costs
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inevitably create more points in the network for cyberattacks
Important issue to study. Argument that more open standards bring more risks is somewhat true: it is harder to create attacks against more closed and specialised networks (plus, an attack against Huawei's network couldn't be applied to Ericsson's, etc) - but obscurity is not really a cure for security (most experts don't believe in 'security by obscurity'). More important element is that much of the functionality of ORAN will be moved to software and cloud, much like other ordinary services. This makes core telecom networks more 'ordinary', and prone to common cyber-attacks and vulnerabilities related to common digital networks. It is important to further study those risks. ||AndrijanaG|| ||VladaR||
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Open RAN makes it easier to focus on developing new software without worrying about losing potential customers intimidated by the task of integrating the tech into their wider networks
ORAN opens up advancement of software solutions for 5G networks - key to virtualisation
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A very good reading that explains technical details (in light language) of O-RAN and future of 5G/6G networks in terms of software virtualisation, supply chain diversification, pros and cons. Useful for DW on 5G, for ITP course, our work on standards, etc ||GingerP|| ||sorina|| ||JovanK|| ||VladaR||
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Proposed Open RAN Functional Splits
Great visual of ORAN split options
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Open RAN is making it possible to pick and choose different RAN components from different vendors
Result of fragmentation of the RAN technology into smaller functions
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In current 5G systems, the baseband unit splits those tasks between a distributed unit and a centralized unit. Open RAN concepts hope to build on that split to create more flexible, thinly sliced RANs.
The key of the technical aspect of ORAN: to break down the technical structure into smaller pieces, based on functions pieces perform. This can dummer (and cheaper) radio units vs smarter baseband units (which can also be more based on software), or vice-versa as described below in the text
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there is currently no guarantee that a radio manufactured by one vendor will be interoperable with a baseband unit manufactured by another vendor.
In spite of existing standards, there is no one who can guarantee that standards make products of various vendors fully interoperable. Later in the text, it says that this remains sort of a challenge with ORAN as well - as network gets more diversified in terms of vendors, more vendors should be 'hold to account' for interoperability. ||sorina||
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The group formed in 2018, when five operators—AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT Docomo, and Orange—joined to spearhead more industry development of Open RAN.
ORAN emerged from the challenge of telecom operators which were bound to one of the three providers - and often remain locked for years.Politics didn't seem to play much at the time (though Huawei bans contributed, in UK and US, to the boost of ORAN) - but may capitalise from it.
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