Primary Goals:  

Implementation of the O-DU Low Physical Layer functions for a 5G Open Access Radio Network allowing the flexibility of a software implementation coupled with the ability of incorporating hardware accelerators on a selective basis and meets the O-RAN architecture goals of scalablity, mix and match multi-vendor modules that are interoperable and that can be upgraded as the standards evolve by software updates.

The O-DU Low physical layer functions follow the 3GPP TS 38 series recommendations for 5G and the 3GPP TS 36 series recommendations for LTE with the 3GPP 7.2 functional split between O-DU Low and O-RU. In 3GPP terms the O-DU Low is referred to HIGH-PHY in the functional split for 5G.

Implementation of the Open Front Haul interface to the O-RU per O-RAN WG4 CUS specifications.

Integration of this component with multi-vendor implementations of O-DU High and O-RU modules for end to end interoperability and compatibility verification.

F Release Feature Scope:

The O-DU Low F release adds support for Massive MIMO, URLLC and it is based on the commercial FlexRan 21.11 release. This release is an incremental improvement over the E-maintenance release code released on March of this year and that still needs to be integrated with the RSYS O-DU High code.

The O-DU Low F Release code is an Intel contribution in collaboration with Tieto Poland for the source code releases in the O-RAN gerrit and for the binary blobs contributed via GitHub.

For the documentation preparation of this release Intel worked with collaboration from Fransiscus Bimo and Professor Ray-Guang Cheng from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST).  

The F release can be used for end to end testing and it is based on the E maintenance release that was used for the 2021 November US O-RAN Plugfest and tested in conjuction with 2 stack partners and 2 different Test equipment vendors. The Front Haul Interface was also tested for compliance using Keysight's Front Haul Test equipment.

Container images and deployment instructions TBDare to be provided during the F maintenance release cycle

E Release Feature Scope: 

O-DU Low  E maintenance release was provided in March, 2022 and it is based on the code used in the November 2021 US O-RAN Plugfest. There are additional changes in the vendor specific portion of the API to support Massive MIMO and URLLC.

Since the code was deployed in the US O-RAN Plugfest using the commercial versions of the stack partners O-DU High code, the open source version from the partners need to be integrated as well. 

The validation done prior to the release used the timer-mode and the test-mac to check all the new features.

Provided O-DU Low E-Maintenance Release on March 2022 to the O-RAN gerrit repo, documentation was updated. Binary blobs for the FlexRan L1 and testmac codes were also provided in github in March.

E release source code, container images and deployment instructions

Source code and documentation including deployment instructions have been provided to the O-RAN documentation site