Linux Foundation Announces Collaboration for 'Open Radio Access Network' Prototypes (linuxfoundation.org) 20
This week the Linux Foundation and the National Spectrum Consortium "announced formal collaboration" on developing software prototypes and demonstrations for Open RAN (open radio access network):
The two organizations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to solidify their working relationship and commitment to minimizing barriers to further R&D necessary for OpenRAN acceleration within the United States.
More open and flexible wireless networks ultimately increase vendor diversity and competition, prevent vendor lock-in, increase innovation in wireless networking technology, lower deployment and operational costs, and even increase security and energy efficiency. "We are eager to work with the NSC in creating a stable, open, secure reference stack for Open RAN," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. "By combining resources, we'll accelerate access to Open RAN and wireless technology across the United States across verticals and into government, academia, and small business."
The collaborations goals include:
The two organizations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to solidify their working relationship and commitment to minimizing barriers to further R&D necessary for OpenRAN acceleration within the United States.
More open and flexible wireless networks ultimately increase vendor diversity and competition, prevent vendor lock-in, increase innovation in wireless networking technology, lower deployment and operational costs, and even increase security and energy efficiency. "We are eager to work with the NSC in creating a stable, open, secure reference stack for Open RAN," said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge & IoT, the Linux Foundation. "By combining resources, we'll accelerate access to Open RAN and wireless technology across the United States across verticals and into government, academia, and small business."
The collaborations goals include:
- Establish an open source reference software architecture for Open RAN that will kickstart academic and commercial R&D by lowering the cost and complexity of entry
- Rally support from industry with guidance and funds to leap forward in a true open and secure RAN
Whatever this is, I think I'm for it (Score:3)
But oddly, neither the summary nor the press release says what OpenRAN is.
So I looked it up
"OpenRANâ(TM)s mission is to accelerate innovation and commercialization in RAN domain with multi-vendor interoperable products and solutions that are easy to integrate in the operatorâ(TM)s network and are verified for different deployment scenarios."
Bingo!
RAN = cellular technology (Score:2)
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Is it meshing? Because if not, we don't need another non-meshing wireless network for phones.
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Re:Whatever this is, I think I'm for it (Score:5, Informative)
OpenRAN is a open form of cellular telephony for radio base stations.
Your cellphone connects to a cell tower which then demodulates the signal and sends it over a backhaul to the phone system (be it POTS or other system).
OpenRAN covers the radio part of the system - from the antennas to the interface with the phone network.
You see, in the past, you bought your cellular telephone stack from a vendor - say, Nokia or Ericsson or Huawei. They will supply you with everything radio related - you plug your antenna into the diplexer which connects to the manufacturer's RF analog front ends and power amp for the transceiver. The analog front end connects to the manufacturer's digital electronics box that decodes and demodulates the signal, those signals are passed to the manufacturer's processor box to be processed and then forwarded to the phone network.
The key part is - the manufacturer basically sells you the entire stack of equipment from the antenna ports to the phone uplink. Your billing systems have custom insights into that equipment so all calls can be billed appropriately but again, its all custom and specific to that manufacturer. None of the equipment interoperates - so if you wanted to dump your Nokia equipment for Ericsson, or what happened around the world, Huawei for anyone else, it's a lot of effort.
OpenRAN is a consortium meant to fix that by making everything modular. The analog front ends can be swapped between manufacturers and anyone can make their own little piece of the system.
There are many reasons - first, there are really only 3 or so big telecom equipment manufacturers because the entire block is complex and sophisticated so few companies have the resources to do it all. Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei are basically it.
But there are so many more companies able to do it bits and pieces of it - the power amplifiers, diplexers, etc are standard RF gear. The front ends and transmitter exciters are basically SDRs, so if it supports OpenRAN that's now an interchangeable piece, then the radio processor that connects to the transceiver, the digital network routing services and such providing SMS and data and other connectivity are more blocks, and so on including handling all the billing information.
So an OpenRAN system you can buy it all from one company, or buy bits and pieces from various smaller companies that can supply that one bit of technology instead of being dependent on one vendor. And if a component is compromised, it can be rapidly swapped out with a non-vulnerable piece of equipment, rather than having to wait for your vendor to fix it.
In short, I could compare traditional 5G networks like an Apple Mac - one piece that does it all. Easy enough, plop it in you're done' OpenRAN is like the old school IBM PC - made up of components you can piece together how you want - and yes, you would have problems integrating components (you always do), but hey, you have a platform that works exactly the way you wanted it. Want to swap out the generic sound card for the latest Sound Blaster? You could.
Naturally, Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei are none too impressed with OpenRAN, none of them are supporting it, and well, it's a huge and complex task that started in the LTE era hoping for deployment in the 5G era but is likely only to come in for 6G and beyond.
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Why do you assume that this has anything to do with cellphones?
I am idly investigating IoT devices for my home. Everywhere I look offers connectivity via something called LoRAN - which involves sending money to some firm for the right to use it.
That's not open. I assume that OpenRAN is going to be an independant, freely available standard for IoT connectors which does not involve paying a single vendor for the privilege of using it.
Re:Whatever this is, I think I'm for it (Score:4, Informative)
I believe you're referring to LoRa (or LoRaN), which is a long range network (not to be confused with LORAN, Long Range Navigation, one of the predecessors of GPS). LoRa is a low-speed networking that I don't quite understand how it works, but you can get remarkable range out of it (miles) depending on your bitrate. The higher the bitrate, the shorter the range. You can get 4-5 miles if you're willing to settle for around 100 bits/sec or so, making it ideal for IoT where you have to have sensors spread out over a wide area without consuming much power as long as you're willing to settle for a low data rate (which sensors generally don't). So sadly your LoRaN doesn't really stand for anything other than an intriguing low-power low bandwidth but really long range radio link.
But that's different from OpenRAN, or RAN in general - RAN here means Radio Access Network which is what the cellular telephony community is calling their stack of radio equipment, with OpenRAN (or O-RAN) being the interchangeable model everyone is trying to accomplish. ("RAN" is supposed to be a generic term for a radio link that connects to a core network - like using WiFi to access the Internet, but it almost exclusively refers strictly to cellular telephony. WiFi can be impkemented RAN-style, in the past corporate WiFi often used wireless controllers attached to RF front ends, though I believe that model isn't so popular given the proprietary nature and low cost products from Ubiquity and others have eliminated any cost advantages).
Here's an excellent article that basically describes what's going on - https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-... [ieee.org]
OpenRAN is the industry term for trying to break the cellular equipment monopoly. Hopefully with Linux Foundation involvement we can see some progress made. I know there are projects like Open Base Station that pretend to be a virtual GSM base station, so hopefully that can be extended to support 5/6G and beyond.
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The big problem with phones, even unlocked ones, is that even though they are capable of transmitting and receiving on lots of 4G and 5G bands, and you can program SIMs to tell the phone to use those bands, often times the phone is hard-coded to only use a specific set of band combinations. Even after you've mastered the Black Art of programming SIMs (and getting your HSS/PCRF equivalent to validate them), it can often be trial-and-error to find a band pair that works with your phone.
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"in the past, you bought your cellular telephone stack from a vendor"
We still do, but now it's a single cellular company. They rent/lease wireless spectrum that only they can use. Like the various 5G ranges (low vs. high frequency at minimum). Even if different companies use the same spectrum they might use different languages (formats for communication) like LTE vs. CDMA vs. TDMA vs... which none of the devices support multiple forms of.
LTE was pretty broadly used worldwide, but not by "everyone". And
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I think it's like, "Let's do what WISPs already do, but as a protocol, or something".
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what frequencies (Score:2)
are we talking about here?
and the Royal Australian Navy wants their acronym back.
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You must not work in tech and/or are pretty young, eh? TLA's are terrible (three letter acronyms) after a few years of life. Hashing collisions on mental buckets sucks too (not just in python dictionaries).
Agreed - bad summary, and hope happens! (Score:3)
The details we'd want to hear and know are missing. Never heard of OpenRAN, nor what a RAN is.
And this is exactly what I assumed would happen back when I first heard the name "software defined radio" (what a decade or more ago, right? Yep, military in the 1990's so I must have heard of it closer to 2000). Sad it's taken so long for this, but I wish them luck.
If I knew more about the hardware side I'd try to help out. I'm more of a software person who keeps reading about hardware a lot. I want to know how the deep details work in general, but I realize my head gets swirly after a bit so I'd rather someone else finish it while I make sure the high level needs are covered.
Step 1 in my mind would be to decide on physical frequency ranges that are useful/common. As I understand it there are physical limitations that you can't use software to work around. That the built in antenna(s) and modems will only work in a certain range. That's on top of the legal wireless spectrums we've decided to "sell/rent" instead of just letting people use them as able.
That'd be another important step. Start working with government to recognize spread spectrum capabilities (again a 1990's tech at least in wireless home phones...though I think didn't Madame Currie or some actress invent it back more like 40's to 60's?). To make the licensing system include physical limitations and options into their assumptions.
If it'd cost $1 extra (in new devices) to let most people share spectrum fairly, I think we should do it now and be done. If it's a lot more $1 the tech should be taken into public domain using eminent domain. This is something necessary for the public good (like land for new freeways, right? Where they buy someones house even if they don't want to sell it).
And no company for profit will willingly create a commodity here. It needs to be forced with a timeline. There is zero reason I should need to buy a new cell phone just to switch cellular carriers effectively (to use all their spectrum). And no, I can't just "be smart and research a good product". If there was an uber device I think we'd all know about it, and many people would be buying it.