Original primary goals based on contributions from Nokia, Samsung, Capgemini, Alexandre Huff (UTFPR), GS Lab and Abhijit G:

Contributions related to E2 interfaces

1. RIC-993 (CG): Near-RT RIC conflict management

2. RIC-933 (CG) : Adding support for CU/DU in E2T/E2M/RNIB

3. RIC-967 (CG) xApp-facing interface for subscription delete required (added on 2023-08-23)

4. RIC-994 (S): Support for E2APv3.0

5. RIC-995 (S): Support for RIC Query

6. RIC-996 (S) Support for Subscription modifications (dhiraj interested as reviewer)

7. RIC-387 = ~RIC-383 (S): Support for E2 reset from RIC to RAN (completes also RIC-383) (prio1) (Dhiraj interested as reviewer, but we had earlier discussion on this) -
   

8. RIC-997 (N): Handling of RIC Error indication _during_ E2 setup

9. RIC-963 (GS) modify src code to be more lenient in ordering of IEs in ASN.1

Other contributions

1. RIC-998 (S): K8S operators for deploying/undeploying xApps

2. RIC-999=~RIC-972 (S): A1 alignment with A1AP (still under investigation. Minimum is using correct URL)

3. RIC-954 (S): DMS Rest API support for deleting/undeploy xApps (DMS REST is 2nd ifc addressing same space as dmscli)

4. Already late in H: RIC-985 (UTFPR) IPv6 support for RMR 

5. RIC-705 (H) update xappframework for c++ to change in xApp registration

6. RIC-1000 (R): Support for only-IPv6 in RIC-internal interfaces

7. RIC-1004 (AG): Xapp Rust Framework enhancement after initial basic Xapp Framework Support
8. RIC-1027 (S) K8S operators for deploying/undeploying Near-RT RIC
9. RIC-950 implement test cases for xapp-frame-cpp
10. RIC-853 Implement subscription delete in Bouncer and E2Sim
11. RIC-1018 A single helm chart for RIC platform deployment

Support for Integration project's pairwise-testing goals

1. ODU-high with near-RT RIC: moving from RIC stub to E2 messages with actual RIC
2. RIC xApp and near-RT RIC: using KPIMon/bouncer xApp or maybe CCC xApp. Maybe xApps can also be used to demonstrate conflict detection
3. non-RT RIC and near-RT RIC: providing standalone A1 mediator for CI testing of non-RT RIC.

Link to planned Jira work items: link

Achieved I release highlights = high-level release notes (2023-06-20) below (note that the release image list is here: link)

• E2 Support for disaggregated RAN, i.e., CU-UP, CU-CP, and DU as identified with gNB ID in E2Setup. E2 nodes identified in RNIB, e.g., like this: gnbd_999_999_AAAAAAAA_BBBBBBBBB (longest case)
• E2 subscription manager supports config parameter to ignore ordering of certain IEs if peer E2 node does not comply with spec.
• In addition to supporting deployment of RIC platform with existing "install <recipe>" script we now also support (un)deployment via (1) umbrella helm chart and (2) via Kubernetes operator.
• Kubernetes operator for deploying xApps as alternative to dms_cli
  
• Enhancements in xApp framework for RUST to get closer to feature parity with xApp frameworks for other languages.

The I release fixes the following two security issues: RIC-991: "CVE-2023-40997 RMR: Crashes caused by improperly formatted packets", and RIC-989: "CVE-2023-40998 RMR: Negative Packet Size Causes Crash". Additionally we fixed 9 bugs (link) and did 3 small implementation tasks  (link)

Filled in end-of-release checklist: Release criteria checklist - Release I

Status 2023-12-05: From the 20 epics planned (link) we implemented 7 (link). 13 items have been moved out of the I release, e.g, because of implementation delays (link). Incomplete items: 0 (link). Additionally we fixed 9 bugs (link) and did 3 small implementation tasks  (link)

I release source code, container images and deployment instructions

The list of container images for the  release (link). A demo video for the I release deployment is available at the top of the demo page and shows

• how to deploy the near-RT RIC platform,
• compile connect the E2 (e2 node) simulator from the OSC simulator project and
• compile the hw-go xapp from the xapp project and use the dms_cli to deploy it and check the E2 subscriptions the xApp created.

Code coverage: Code coverage reports (current coverage and a list of components that still needs to be set up Jenkins job for auto-generation of the reports as part of CI)

Mapping of new features to O-RAN Spec

Compliance with the O-RAN specification is described in the section "External interfaces" in Introduction and guides. This release advanced specification compliance in A1 (RIC-999 URL change, but still bug for maintenance release: RIC-1031. We now also support RIC-933 disaggregated RAN (CU-CP/CU-UP/DU) in E2 connections.