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Radisys Series — Who Disaggregated My RAN?
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As a result, an ecosystem began to flourish as OEMs started to implement this virtualization approach. Many
operators started evaluating proof-of-concept implementations to understand VNF implementations and
orchestration needs. Most of these projects and early implementations in LTE networks were targeted towards
virtualizing EPC (core network) nodes.
There have been a few open source projects to provide comprehensive orchestration capabilities for telco
deployments. Two notable projects in this space are Open Source MANO and ONAP (Open Network Automation
Platform). Of late, there has been widespread support for development and adoption for ONAP. ONAP was a
culmination of two projects: OPEN-O (Linux Foundation) and AT&T's ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration,
Management, and Policy) platform. Today ONAP has a strong development community supported by many operators
and vendors. ONAP releases are now aligned to support Open RAN architecture and management/deployment
needs.
Orchestration, O-RAN Style.
The O-RAN Alliance has focused from the start on cloudified implementations of Open RAN and related needs for
management and automation. The Alliance's Working Group 6 has been developing a reference architecture for
a cloud platform architecture and the orchestration layer. O-RAN architecture envisions a uniform O1 interface
for the management of RAN nodes. The O2 interface defines the architecture for managing the underlying
infrastructure and orchestrating network functions as shown in the diagram below. A detailed view of how to
handle various common scenarios is available in the O-RAN specifications as use case descriptions.
Diagram 2: O-RAN O-Cloud and SMO relationship
