It’s all in the telemetry
Mobile network operators could soon be given better options for managing their Open RANs from cloud operator Azure. The engines of 5G networks on the telco cloud could be more finely tuned by more intelligent control of their Open radio access networks (O-RANs), thanks to better reporting on the state of the network.
The improvement comes as Microsoft Azure is editing its RAN intelligent controller (RIC) for Open RAN systems so that detailed internal states and telemetry can be instantly extracted by RAN software for new RAN control applications, reports TelecomTV. It gives telco cloud operators better monitoring and management options for managing their performance.
In his blog, Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president at Azure for Operators, claims this newly developed technology could be blended with detailed platform telemetry to make network monitoring better for operators, which could makes for better performance optimisation of their 5G networks. “[It would] enable new AI, analytics and automation options that were not possible before,” said Khalidi.
Microsoft is working on RAN Analytics and Control technologies for virtualised RAN running on Microsoft Edge platforms. The goal is to empower any virtualised RAN system maker or mobile operator to get the best out of its disaggregated and programmable networks. “We aim to develop platform technologies that virtualised RAN vendors can use to gain analytics insights in their RAN software operations,” said Khalil.
Microsoft recently introduced flexible, dynamically loaded service models to both the RAN software stack and the cloud/edge systems hosting the RAN, to speed the pace of invention in Open RAN. According to the blog, the current standard effort of O-RAN by the O-RAN Alliance specifies the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) architecture that exposes a set of telemetry and control interfaces with predefined service models (known as the E2 interface). Open RAN vendors are expected to implement all E2 service models specified in the standard. Near-real-time RAN controls are made possible with xApp applications accessing these service models.
Last year Microsoft, Intel and Capgemini, jointly developed an analytics and control approach that was acclaimed by Light Reading editors as an outstanding use case for Service provider AI. The full blog is available here.