A slide set introducing the O-RAN ALLIANCE

This white paper presents O-RAN ALLIANCE's interests in industrial engagement to show the benefits of O-RAN architecture in several vertical industries. It starts with brief introduction of O-RAN Architecture, followed by an analysis of vertical industry use cases and requirements. Opportunities and benefits of O-RAN Architecture corresponding to each use case are discussed in the subsequent section. O-RAN key solutions, field trials and deployments are presented, followed by O-RAN potential enhancement features to further accommodate vertical demands. This white paper concludes with key findings and future visions toward better vertical industry O-RAN network deployment.‍

It is important that 5G and next-G networks providing critical infrastructure and mission critical use cases are built with a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) to protect against external and internal threats. ZTA is the evolution of the zero trust concept to a concrete plan based upon multi-layered security controls that provide confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, and authorization protections from internal and external threats. The O-RAN ALLIANCE is committed to pursue a ZTA through stages of a maturity model that achieve a strong security posture to protect against evolving threats.

O-RAN ALLIANCE operates in compliance with WTO principles for the development of international standards, guides and recommendations: transparency, openness, impartiality and consensus, effectiveness and relevance, coherence, and addressing the concerns of developing countries. Learn more in our white paper.

The O-RAN ALLIANCE's mission is to re-shape the Radio Access Network (RAN) industry towards more intelligent, open, virtualized, and fully interoperable networks. To achieve its mission, it embarks on three main streams of work: Specification effort, O-RAN Software Community, and Testing and Integration. As part of the Testing and Integration stream, Open Testing and Integration Centres (OTICs) and the O-RAN Certification and Badging program are key pillars that support O-RAN ecosystem in achieving the mission. This white paper provides an overview of these two key pillars, what they are, how they operate, and their key objectives.

The third O-RAN ALLIANCE whitepaper extends the previous ones and outlines the alliance’s focus on several key areas to accelerate and enable the introduction of the rich capabilities of O-RAN Architecture in commercial networks and provides a minimum set of end-to-end specifications for selected use cases for the deployment of a secure, multi-vendor interoperable network. This whitepaper starts with the latest snapshot of O-RAN Architecture, followed by an introduction to the O-RAN Minimum Viable Plan (MVP) for prioritized delivery of a minimum viable set of end-to-end O-RAN solutions applicable in commercial networks using the input of Operator members. Additional use cases defined since the last use cases whitepaper are summarized in the subsequent section. The O-RAN Software Community (OSC) effort to help accelerate the realization of O-RAN vision through open-source projects is followed by the progress of Test and Integration Focus Group (TIFG) for testing and integration of multi-vendor O-RAN solutions through end-to-end test specifications, the guidelines for Open Testing and Integration Centres (OTICs) and the organization of global PlugFests. This whitepaper is concluded with the Security Focus Group’s (SFG’s) work in progress to ensure secure O-RAN through the development of a security architecture, enabling 5G service providers deploy and operate O-RAN with the same level of confidence as existing networks.

This whitepaper introduces the initial set of O-RAN use cases and cloud native deployment support options. The first part of the whitepaper covers O-RAN use cases that are both leveraging the O-RAN architecture and demonstrating its unique benefits including utilization of AI/ML modules to empower network intelligence through open and standardized interfaces in a multi-vendor network. After the use cases, O-Cloud, the cloud computing platform comprising a collection of physical infrastructure nodes that can host the relevant O-RAN functions, the supporting software components, the appropriate management and orchestration functions are introduced, enabling flexible deployment options in virtualized telco clouds.

While operators around the world believe that a modern 5G infrastructure will enable new vertical market revenue opportunities, there is unanimous agreement that traditional supply chain and procurement models must change. Status quo, proprietary product architectures and complicated, vendor specific Operations and Management (O&M) systems will not serve these operator’s collective goals and must evolve to overcome the real capital, operational and technical challenges the industry is facing today. The O-RAN ALLIANCE was founded by operators to clearly define requirements and help the supply chain eco-system build and deploy innovative products and services that will strengthen the industry well into the 21st Century.