Demystifying the Near-real Time RIC: Architecture, Operations, and Benchmarking Insights

• Published in: IEEE INFOCOM 2023 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS) pp. 1 - 8
• Main Authors: Thieu, Huu-Trung, Pham, Van-Quan, Kak, Ahan, Choi, Nakjung
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 20.05.2023
• Subjects: Closed box; Computer architecture; Conferences; Industries; Process control; Programmable control; Scalability
• ISSN: 2833-0587
• DOI: 10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS57453.2023.10225852

Widely expected to serve as a blueprint for the upcoming sixth generation of cellular networks, the Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) architecture is ushering in a new era of programmable control and assurance for the telecommunications industry. Central to Open RAN's themes of softwarization and programmability is the N earreal Time RAN Intelligent Controller (near-RT RIC). Operating on a timescale of greater than 10 IDS, the near-RT RIC is proving indispensable for key use cases relating to traffic engineering, resource optimization, infrastructure sharing, and service assurance. However, despite its critical role, the near-RT RIC is still largely considered a black box, with existing literature providing little to no insight regarding the RIC's internal architecture, operations, and performance. With a view to addressing this gap in the prior art, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the near-RT RIC, detailing both the RIC's architecture as well as delivering scalability-related insights through a detailed set of performance benchmarks. Furthermore, for the first time in the literature, this paper also provides unique operational input regarding the RIC.