Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) Experimentation Platform: Design and Datasets

Abstract

The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Alliance is driving the latest evolution of RAN deployments, moving from traditionally closed and dedicated hardware implementations towards virtualized instances running over shared platforms characterized by open interfaces. Such progressive decoupling of radio software components from the hardware paves the road for future efficient and cost-effective RAN deployments. Nevertheless, there are many open aspects towards the successful implementation of O-RAN networks, such as the real-time configuration of the network parameters to maximize performance, how to reliably share processing units among multiple virtualized base station (vBS) instances, how to palliate their energy consumption, or how to deal with the couplings between vRANs and other services co-located at the edge. Intending to shed light on these aspects, in this article, we showcase the design principles of an ORAN compliant testbed, and present different datasets collected over a wide set of experiments, which are made public to foster research in this field.