I'm pleased to announce that we have joined the Open Networking Foundation. Our primary interest is in the SD-RAN project. What makes SD-RAN interesting to us is the fact that this community is building an open source near-real-time RIC (nRT-RIC) and a set of xApps. As a quick backgrounder and the context for our interest, let's review the O-RAN architecture diagram first (from an ONAP point-of-view).
Our product, the Aarna Networks Multi Cluster Orchestration Platform (AMCOP), serves the role of what O-RAN calls an SMO (Service Management & Orchestration). AMCOP onboards and orchestrates the various O-RAN components, performs configuration and lifecycle management on these components, and then monitors them for analytics and closed control loop automation. AMCOP will also implement the Non-Real-Time RIC functionality (NONRTRIC). We utilize (or plan to utilize) ONAP projects such as EMCO, CDS, DCAE, Policy, DMaaP to build AMCOP.
AMCOP will have multiple interfaces to other O-RAN components. The main ones are O1 for fault management (FM), performance management (PM), and configuration management (CM) and A1 for providing policies to the nRT-RIC.
By participating in the SD-RAN project, we hope to contribute to and benefit from the community in the following ways:
We believe that this will be a great two way street. We can hopefully contribute to the community and at the same time, we can benefit from the community by interacting with the top minds in the O-RAN space.
If you have any thoughts or questions, please do reach out to us at info@aarnanetworks.com. We already have a video of AMCOP and the O1 interface and we will be publishing future blogs and demo videos on our O-RAN activities.
