Keysight Technologies, Inc.

1 800 829-4444 T
1400 Fountaingrove Pkwy
Santa Rosa, CA 95403 www.keysight.com

O-RAN for 5G: The Path Forward

Q&A from webinar on May 27, 2020

Prepared by:
Kalyan Sundhar
Vice President and General Manager of 5G Edge to Core Group
Keysight Technologies

For more information:

• www.keysight.com/find/ORAN - solutions
• www.keysight.com/find/5Gwebinars - archived recording and other 5G topics
• Open RAN Studio for O-RAN Radio Unit (O-RU) Testing and Validation – free trial license
• O-RAN Radio Unit (O-RU) Testing and Validation – datasheet

1. Conformance and Interoperability testing will become critical for enabling multi-vendor O-RAN.
What is O-RAN alliance doing in this testing area?
Yes, Keysight is a major contributor and is the editor of the Conformance Test Specification for
the O-RAN Alliance WG4 Lower Layer Split.

2. An additional area of 5G O-RAN is the support for mMTC support in O-RAN. This includes
support for LTE-NB1, NB2, LTEM1, M2. Will O_RAN Alliance focus on this mMTC aspect at all?
The O-RAN Fronthaul Working Group Control, User and Synchronization Plane and the separate
Management Plane specifications are designed to support eMTC. Test specifications and
interop tests will cover these areas in a future release.

3. Would WG1 be responsible for integration of O-RAN Orchestration and Automation with a
higher layer, end-to-end cross-domain orchestration system? OSS? Network-level Service
Assurance?
That will be WG6.

4. How does a LTE & IoT Consulting company get involved in the O-RAN Alliance?
This can be done by joining the alliance as a contributor.

5. Are OTIC test cases eligible to be funded by agencies? DoD, DARPA, etc?
The test cases are really developed in the WGs. The TIFG uses the WG Specs and tests to
determine which ones will be executed in an OTIC. If these agencies have some use cases in
mind, then those could be discussed.

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 Keysight Technologies, Inc. 1 800 829-4444 T
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6. Standards Conformance Testing and Multi-Vendor Interoperability Testing are different. Will O-
RAN do both types of testing?
Agree that they are different as I addressed in the Q&A part of the presentation. O-RAN species
both.

7. It seems like the air interface has vastly exceeded backhaul capabilities. Have there been
updates to the backhaul to support the air interface speeds?
Goal is to manage the bandwidth required between each interface point…which is where the
splits comes in. Also using eCPRI (Front haul) greatly reduces the bandwidth needs compared
to CPRI (eCPRI you send only when there is user data not all the time like CPRI). Backhaul
speeds in general have gone up with 100G NICs being the standard on generic Intel servers
hosting the EPC/5G Nodes.

8. Isn't it the more interfaces you have , the more cost it would have from an overall system
perspective? specifically the CU, DU RU, E2, F1 etc.
Not necessarily. It allows more niche & best of breed vendors to engage from a more
competitive standpoint bringing the costs to an optimum level.

9. For professionals working in PHY; what are the skills & certifications you recommend for the
future deployment of 5G? and, do you recommend certification offerings by members of
ORAN?
There is an XRAN tutorial done by two of WG4 chairs.

10. Is the O-DU and O-RU separate boxes, or they could be cloud based solutions?
There is a concept of the ALD as a separate part of the RU. The ALD could house all the RF parts
of the solution for instance while the RU could be potentially virtualized. However, there is no
defined “time” or “sync” in this interface, and it is currently assumed these devices are co-
located. So it would not be part of the cloud but the processing done indeed could be
supported in a cloud architecture. O-DU could be in the cloud.

11. Thank you for the excellent presentation. I'm wondering what might be the most important
practical issues in live network deployment, especially as for the interoperability?
It was covered in the last section of the presentation. This question came in during the
presentation before I covered that section. If you still have questions, please contact us & we
will glad to respond.

12. With O-RAN, means more vendors and solution providers. Much more PoCs and testing will be
required including a interop with existing legacy Network infrastructures from big RAN
vendors. An operator cannot do the testing on the production Network in most of the time.
Then much more wok is required in the LAB: How do you think the Lab should look like, so an
operator can test an compare solution and architectures: RAN, core, E2E..
This will vary a lot. There are operators who would test components in a physical as well a
virtual/cloud setup. Testing the front-haul -> Both O-RU and O-DU will likely be its own test

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setups and then the mid-haul and back-haul would have real and simulated components as
necessary.

13. What are the most important security challenges in O-RAN?

There is robust access control defined for the O-RU and defined in the standards for the
Fronthaul. Encryption is already defined for the M-Plane and is a current topic for addition to
the standard for the C- and U-Plane. Still, these are a small part of the overall O-RAN
architecture. In general, the same issues that afflict systems worldwide including OS attacks,
Denial of Service attacks, phishing attack for passwords, etc. are probably the largest dangers
and apply here as well.

14. Hello, could you pls tell how this split of CU(CP and UP) and between CU and DU in O-RAN is
different from usual 3GPP 5G NR scenarios. We see these splits options there too. Thanks
The split between Cu-UP & Cu-CP as well O-DU & O-CU allow these components to be housed
in multiple possible ways. Cu-CP could be hosted in the cloud while Cu-UP could be in an Edge
Server. I think the question is more about how the O-RAN alliance specifications for these
components is different from the 3GPP specification for architectural splits. I believe the
answer would be that the O-RAN Alliance defines the detailed protocols to implement the
3GPP architecture which is otherwise not specified.

15. Where do you see the critical challenges from an overall network management perspective for
O-RAN evolution and adoption into mainstream?
MANO & Cloud Orchestration schemes will come into a play with O-RAN.
Challenges will be for O-RAN components to work with various orchestration schemes and be
flexible to work as part of different slices, potentially hosted in a multi-cloud environment

16. What is M plane?

M-Plane is the management plane of the O-RU. It is used for controlling the Node (SW loading,
alarms, and log collection), and to configure the Radio functions. The LLS m-Plane defined by
WG4 combines these functions.

17. What is your recommended baseline 3GPP release for F1/E1 interfaces and when do you
foresee an aligned timeline for O1/O2/A1/E2 interfaces?
The required baseline for F1 and E1 is not yet available. Whether the Cu-CP, Cu-UP, and O-DU
come from the same vendor or are selected from different vendors it is critical to validate the
both the conformance and inter-op of the nodes. This is also important as upgrades are rolled
into the network.
O1/O2/A1/E2 interfaces will not align before the end of the year. We expect to start seeing all
the non RT-RIC and near RT-RIC forming a common reporting infrastructure around that time.
After that we will start seeing more active control such as traffic steering in 2021 and beyond.

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18. How much of the M-Plane, C-plane and Data-plane can be moved into the on-premise cloud or
private cloud?
All of them can be. The key is interworking between the O-RU and O-DU. The O-RU must
however be co-located with antenna arrays as the O-RU contains the electronics to generate
and receive the RF energy from these arrays.

19. Do you see SyncE / PTP as required in most implementations, or would you expect GPS sync to
be ubiquitous?
There are 4 architectural models for sync/timing in the Fronthaul specification. These are
called LLS-C1, LLS-C2, LLS-C3 and LLS-C4. Most of these options, and indeed most of the current
efforts in the industry, use PTP. SyncE may be required if there are switches between the
timing master and the O-RU. LLS-C4 solutions with GPS or similar are certainly supported in the
specification but there is not currently a heavy emphasis on this model.

20. Considering all the challenges described, what is the time horizon to have "productized"
solutions for the marketplace? Are they going to be easy to manage for both Tier 1 & Tier 2
CSPs or the degree of complexity will simply shift the vendor locking towards the Integrators?
Some new operators such as Rakuten and Dish will get there sooner as they don’t have the
legacy to deal with. More widespread deployments will be closer to 12-18 months.

21. From what we have seen in the market, most ORAN vendors are now trialing (or deploying) 4G
systems with the operators. How far away are the ORAN vendors from actually having a 5G
RAN available? Are we talking months and years and would they comply to release 16?
Limited deployments will be sooner. More widespread deployments in 12-18 months.

22. Slide 17: O-DU: You mentioned purpose built hardware. Can you expand on that? How will
purpose built HW be "open"?
O-DU could be cloud-based or purpose-built using GPUs and accelerator cards with std.
servers.

23. How does Keysight support in IOT with carrier?

We are working with several operators/carriers currently. Keysight provides UE Emulation
equipment and related test equipment to fully support IOT testing as defined by the O-RAN
Alliance for the Fronthaul network. Keysight will also supply IOT test equipment for other
layers as IOT is defined.

24. Do you view Open RAN Studio as a product for lab use only or is it a product that can be used
for monitoring and debugging issues on a live network
It is primarily used for R&D and I&V today.

25. Is there a specific Open Source license in use by the O-RAN alliance?
The O-RAN Open Source Focus Group (OSFG) is a Focus Group under O-RAN TSC (Technical
Steering Committee) dedicate to dealing with open source-related issues for O-RAN Alliance.

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Its responsibility includes the planning, preparation and establishment of an O-RAN open
source community, development of open source-related strategy, coordination with other
open source communities etc. The biggest task that OSFG has accomplished was the successful
launch of the O-RAN Software Community (O-RAN SC or OSC) partnering with Linux Foundation
on April 2nd, 2019. With the setup of O-RAN SC, most of open source activities are happening
from O-RAN OSFG to O-RAN SC. Therefore, currently the OSFG is in a dormant mode.
For more detailed information regarding O-RAN SC and TOC, please visit the O-RAN SC website
at: https://o-ran-sc.org/ and https://www.o-ran.org/software

26. Are all the operators converging to Option 7.2 or are we going to see a mix and match? How
would this affect interoperability?
Generally see convergence at 7.2x. Still challenges with interoperability between O-RUs and O-
DUs when it comes to M-plane implementations, beamforming schemes.

27. Are O-RAN standards publicly available? If so, how can we access the specifications?
Specifications can be obtained from the O-RAN Alliance specifications page here:
https://www.o-ran.org/specifications To download the specifications, you must agree to the
O-RAN Alliance Adopter License Agreement. The O-RAN Alliance publishes specifications and
updates to specifications for public access twice a year (typically).

28. How do you see the level of real collaboration from the larger OEMs (Nokia, Ericsson, etc)?
They will need to comply with the operator’s push in this regard. Remember, O-RAN alliance is
an operator led initiative.

29. Can you explain again the difference between O-RAN and OpenRAN ?
O-RAN alliance defines the specifications and reference architecture that openRAN utilizes for
interoperability testing. Starting Feb this year, openRAN agreed to use O-RAN alliance
specifications

30. What about 5G in America

There are companies such as Altiostar, Mavenir, Parallel Wireless, Intel, Nvidia and many
others well engaged from an America perspective. All US operators are well positioned to
deploy 5G

31. Does Keysight have successful use case with Mobile Network Operator(with whom) ? If yes Can
you share the result based on performance after O-RAN solution?
We have many. We will release them shortly.

32. Are handset interoperability issues all between the RU and UE or can the DU/CU be involved
Yes, the DU/CU will be involved as they deal with the 3GPP protocols that the handsets deal
with.

O-RAN for 5G: The Path Forward 5

 Keysight Technologies, Inc. 1 800 829-4444 T
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Santa Rosa, CA 95403 www.keysight.com

33. Is the O-RAN intended to replace CPRI/eCPRI interfaces or they should co-exist in the mid and
long-term?
Both CPRI & eCPRI are part of O-RAN Fronthaul solutions. For 5G networks, eCPRI will be used
as the Fronthaul interface.

34. Does Ixload RIC tester can be used to test RIC component alone, or the under the test RIC need
to be placed in a ORAN network?
It can test it as stand-alone

35. How is this different from Small Cell Forum defined C-RAN
C-RAN & X-RAN merged to become O-RAN alliance.

36. How many RU can connect to one DU. Is there a limit

There is no practical limit on the number of RUs that can connect to a single DU.

37. Which of the BS vendors adapting ORAN specs

All of the traditional Base Station vendors are actively involved in this alliance

38. How we can interoperate for NSA between two different RAN OEM in 4G & 5G . Can it be
supported with 3GPP compliance or ORAN WG5 specs compliance is must about white box
radios, are these devices supposed to rely on SDR compliant with 3GPP specs?
There are many options in the O-RAN Alliance Fronthaul specifications to support connectivity
between the O-RU and O-DU and include ethernet, ethernet with VLANs, IPv4 and IPv6. Any
and all can be used, and each O-RU is considered a completely independent entity by the O-
DU.

39. How do you see the difference between O-RAN and OpenRAN? They look so similar. From my
point of view they overlap each other.
O-RAN alliance defines the specifications and reference architecture that openRAN utilizes for
interoperability testing. Starting Feb this year, openRAN agreed to use O-RAN alliance
specifications

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