Background
The goal of Akraino is to provide production-ready blueprints with CI/CD testing that provide a prescriptive way to successfully deploy infrastructure for specific use cases. Akraino allows for many different blueprints which are able to independently target whatever use cases the respective teams want to target. The Radio Edge Cloud (REC) blueprint specifically targets the use case of deploying a Radio Access Network Intelligent Controller (RIC) and potentially other RAN components in the future. Akraino welcomes contributors to create new blueprints if they feel that specific use cases can benefit from alternate ways of deploying some of the same components as existing blueprints.
The goal of O-RAN is to provide specifications for an open radio access network.
The goal of O-RAN-SC is to provide an implementation of the RAN components that are described by O-RAN specifications.
Proposal
We propose that O-RAN should partner with Akraino to provide the platform portion of an open RAN while O-RAN-SC provides the RAN specific software. With open specifications it is possible for anyone to independently implement a system that meets the specifications, but it is useful to have a recognized reference implementation. Akraino's focus on defining blueprints, including hardware specifications as well as software and deploying CI/CD infrastructure to test the combined hardware and software specification as a full stack makes it well suited to produce reference implementations. As a specifications organization O-RAN should provide requirements for the platform which is required to run an open RAN, but in many cases the implementation details may be left unspecified. As a software development organization, O-RAN-SC should focus on implementing RAN software, not common components such as operating system, container management, logging, etc.
By partnering with Akraino, O-RAN will specify the parts of the infrastructure that matter and leave Akraino free to define one or more blueprints that flesh out the details that aren't intrinsic to supporting the RAN components. Akraino will define all the details and implement CI/CD infrastructure to do complete full stack testing to ensure that the running system as a whole meets the O-RAN specifications.
Considerations
Akraino promotes the validation of blueprints using the Akraino BluVal software which provides a "layers" approach to testing the various components of a system. Some examples of layers are "hardware", "operating system", "OpenStack", "Kubernetes". Additional layers can be added, so a "RAN" or "RIC" layer would be a natural extension. In this proposal, a role of O-RAN would be to provide the specifications against which a RAN or RIC layer would be validated. The Akraino REC blueprint (and any future blueprints that implement RAN components) will incorporate this testing into the CI/CD, but other non-Akraino implementations of O-RAN would be free to choose whether or not to make use of BluVal for validation testing.
O-RAN and O-RAN-SC members who are interested in the non-RAN portions of an O-RAN compliant system should be encouraged to look to Akraino and participate in Akraino to broaden the range of hardware support and to enhance and test the non-RAN software components of the system.
The Akraino REC blueprint currently supports the O-RAN RIC. The option is open to add additional RAN components to the REC blueprint or create new Akraino blueprints for additional O-RAN based components.