Technical Charter for O-RAN Software Community

2020 05 20

Agenda

1. Call for Scribe (minutes owner) Farheen Cefalu

2. Roll Call & Quorum Check 

   Company	Contact Name	Attendance	Alternate Contact	Attendance
   AT&T	Jack Murray Co-Chair		Lusheng Ji
   China Mobile	Jinri Huang Co-Chair		Weichen Ni
   Deutsche Telekom	David Streibl		Ondřej Hudousek
   NTT DOCOMO	Masafumi Masuda		Anil Umesh
   Orange	William Diego		Vincent Danno
   Verizon	Viswa Kumar		Kristen Young
   Nokia	Juha Oravainen		Thoralf Czichy
   Radisys	Ganesh Shenbagaraman		Sachin Srivastava
   Ericsson	John-Paul Lane

   *Quorum: 50% or more of total TSC voting members unless excluded due to attendance.  We have a quorum and can vote on activities.

3. Review and Agree to Minutes of Previous Meeting 

4. Review of Today's Agenda

5. Release Votes and Approval

6. Copyright updates

7. Marketing of the current release (WG, LF, PR)

   1. Virtual Exhibition.

   2. OSC Logo status.

8. Status of Open Action Items (Old Business)

   1. Action/ William DIEGO update on the coordination with the O-RAN test group
   2. Action/ William DIEGO and user-59b16 lead the effort for the simulator and coordinate the Viavi participation.
   3. Action/ Jinri Huang status of code contribution to the O-CU effort.

9. Standing Agenda Items (Brief Status of Ongoing Activities)

   1. Release Manager Trishan de Lanerolle /Release Planning: Weekly TOC Scheduling

      1. Bronze Timeline

      2. Review Bronze Release Highlights

   2. user-59b16 Requirements Software Architecture Committee

   3. user-d3360  Integration and Test

      1. Gerrit review process improvement
      2. Integration and testing status report
         

   4. Report out from PTL: Stand-Up & Report Out on Blockers - next week we will start to cover this list.  Are there any major items that anyone would like to raise to the TOC this week? 

      1. John Keeney Non-RealTime RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) (NONRTRIC)

      2. Matti Hiltunen RIC Applications (RICAPP) 

      3. Thoralf Czichy RIC Platform (RIC)

         1. See status notes under "Status 2020-04-29 and 2020-04-30 and 2020-05-06 and 2020-05-12" in Bronze Release (Jun 2020)

      4. user-a934b O-RAN Centralized Unit (OCU) 

      5. Sachin Srivastava O-RAN Distributed Unit High (ODUHIGH)

      6. Zhimin Yuan O-RAN Distributed Unit Low (ODULOW)

         1. status update

      7. Martin Skorupski Operations and Maintenance (OAM)

      8. Alex Stancu Simulations (SIM)

      9. Xiaohua Zhang Infrastructure (INF)

      10. weichen ni Documentation (DOC)

      11. (TBD) O-RAN Radio Unit (ORU)

10. New Agenda Items (New Business): New Items Submitted (+speaker) & Open Call to TOC For Additional Items. 

    1. OAI purposed Meeting
    2. Discuss OSA

11. Planning for Next Meeting

12. Any Other Business (AOB) 

13. Meeting Summary (resolutions, new action items, etc.)

2020 05 13

Zoom recording: 2020-05-13_toc.mp4

Agenda

1. Call for Scribe (minutes owner) Farheen Cefalu

2. Roll Call & Quorum Check 

   Company	Contact Name	Attendance	Alternate Contact	Attendance
   AT&T	Jack Murray Co-Chair	x	Lusheng Ji
   China Mobile	Jinri Huang Co-Chair	x	Weichen Ni	x
   Deutsche Telekom	David Streibl	x	Ondřej Hudousek
   NTT DOCOMO	Masafumi Masuda	x	Anil Umesh
   Orange	William Diego	x	Vincent Danno
   Verizon	Viswa Kumar		Kristen Young
   Nokia	Juha Oravainen	x	Thoralf Czichy
   Radisys	Ganesh Shenbagaraman	x	Sachin Srivastava
   Ericsson	John-Paul Lane	x

   *Quorum: 50% or more of total TSC voting members unless excluded due to attendance.  We have a quorum and can vote on activities.

3. Review and Agree to Minutes of Previous Meeting 

   1. The minutes of the prior meetings were reviewed, and there were no comments, questions or corrections.
      1. Vote to approve minutes for 06 May 2020 
      2. On motion made by Juha Oravainen
      3. Seconded by user-2057e
      4. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed

4. Review of Today's Agenda

   1. Add O-RAN Distributed Unit Low (ODULOW) May 31st Bronze delivery request to the top of the agenda because we ran out of time last week.
      1. The question is ODULOW will deliver before May 31st.
      2. Their target is to deliver at the end of May which does not give them time for Integration.  They wanted to put it in their code in the repo untested and un-integrated and finish up during the maintenance window.  This is a discussion during the TOC.  I had a discussion with Intel last night for Cherry release and their software contributions and processes.  They are going back to work those items and express that they will be able to improve them.  In terms of a vote.  Assuming that they contribute all the code by May 31 and their final date is June 14 do we consider that code is a part of the Bronze release.  This is a question for the whole TOC how they want to proceed.  The code is there and is complete and it stretches things out.  
         1. Rittwik I think the code is there.  Lusheng please comment.  There is a bilateral agreement that happened.  We set up the servers in May.
         2. Lusheng: The Intel team stated source code is in Amber.  They didn't provide the Bronze code.  They will install the binarys there and do their pairwise testing with ODU-HIGH.  That will happen in parallel with the source code.  We are asking for the Bronze release to put out the source code for their internal process and provide all the unit and simulation testing.  They do have unit testing not integration testing.  In terms of integration building and whats happening with ODU-HIGH currently are having issues and do not have an ETA due to lab access.  I can not promise integrated testing of ODU-HIGH. will happen in Bronze release but in maintenanace.
         3. Zhimin Yuan  For ODU-LOW project can be published by the Intel process by the end of May.  Layer 2 test 2 will finish unit tests internally.  We will use the open lab if able as well.  We are asking for you to include ODU-LOW for the B release.
         4. Jack: For other TOC members are there questions?
         5. Juha: What about the licensing voting that is still ongoing and will be completed next week.  Will that effect this vote?
         6. Jack: It's being used as a test fixture.  The community members have to decide if they are interested in the ODU path based on the Intel approach.  The approval is based on license review and everyone is aware that we are using the software.  But it is not a part of the software contribution.  It's more or less to allow us to use it for testing.  Do you still want to wait until after we get the license approval or should we vote now?
         7. Juha: If licensing is not approved then we revisit.  I wanted to understand it a little better.
         8. Zhimin: We will do integration testing if we are able.

5. Release Votes and Approval

   1. Vote on including O-RAN Distributed Unit Low (ODULOW) in the Bronze Release.
      1. On motion made by Ganesh Shenbagaraman for the O-DU LOW contribution made by 01 Jun 2020  to the repos.
      2. user-2057e seconded the motion
      3. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed
6. Copyright updates
   1. Vote on including O-RAN Distributed Unit Low (ODULOW) in the Bronze Release.
   2. Acceptance of using the Intel binary software as the FlexrRAN approach.
   3. Copyright.
      1. issues with the copyright approval.  
         1. Jack: Not enough board members voted to pass it before a question came up about it.  We got some clarification.  I have to investigate further.  Both are still active.
         2. O-RAN using Intel ends this Friday.  Last I looked there were plus 10 votes.  I don't expect a problem with that one.  I will only find out the outcome. 
   4. Jinri: I didn't receive information from Viavi.  This is tentative.  I have forwarded this message during the TSC call.  They raised a request for two collaborations.  One is short term and the other is long term collaboration.  WGs, TSC, and OTIC.  TSC Co chair asked us how we want to use this from OSC perspective.  What software will OTIC and other WGs have?  We need to combine these requirements and discuss further before presenting to Viavi.

7. Marketing of the current release (WG, LF, PR)

   1. Virtual Exhibition.

      1. Jinri: 21 May 2020  will be the deadline for WG1 contributions for the demo.  Contact Jinri for the virtual exhibition.  Paul Smith will organize teleconference and review submissions.
   2. OSC Logo status.

8. Status of Open Action Items (Old Business)

   1. Action/ Farheen Cefalu add copyright updates to the agenda. (See item 6 added above)
   2. Action/ Farheen Cefaluadd link to the Virtual Exhibition site.   (Completed on 28 Apr 2020 on Events)
   3. Action/ Farheen add reviewing Bronze release highlights to the agenda (See item 9.ii added below)
      1. Issue for Bronze gets back to the marketing.  If there are companies that want to make statements as a part of Bronze takes time.  We do it through O-RAN Alliance.  Jinri is our contact for that.  We will work on figuring out on the EC meeting.
      2. John-Paul Lane: Who should we contact?
      3. Jack: Send an email to Jinri and copy Jack.  You don't need the complete list.  We want to know for tracking purposes.
   4. Action/ Farheen Add the O-RAN-SC logo request to the marketing agenda. (See 7b above)
   5. Action/ William DIEGO update on the coordination with the O-RAN test group
      1. Jack: William work with Rittwik and the simulator to coordinate the Viavi participation.  Action/ William DIEGO and user-59b16 lead this effort.

9. Standing Agenda Items (Brief Status of Ongoing Activities)

   1. Release Manager Trishan de Lanerolle /Release Planning: Weekly TOC Scheduling

      1. Bronze Timeline

      2. Review Bronze Release Highlights

   2. user-59b16 Requirements Software Architecture Committee

      1. Cherry release requirements have started.  I am setting up a few meetings individually to gather requirements.  TOC should consider what kind of teams are gong to form for the use cases.  We have a few extra epics.  
      2. Bronze release the final integration will be done for call flows and traffic steering.  We have truncated some of those flows.  The RSAC wiki has been updated to reflect this.
      3. Jack: I'd like to continue to see the ETE use cases evolve to drive the community to more ETE operations.  There is an OAM contributions.  I would hope O-DU and O-CU can start those use cases.  I hope we can get a new use case to demonstrate either near Real Time RIC and xAPPs and non Real Time RIC and rApps.  I would like to make sure we are pushing the projects together as a larger system.  They should be done around useful functions like traffic steering and OAM.  If different people have different use cases then provide the input.  It is key that each key advances the overall stack and elements.  We only do two a year so it is important to push ourselves.

   3. user-d3360  Integration and Test

      1. Gerrit review process improvement
         1. I will table this for now.  We will start it in Cherry.
      2. Integration and testing status report
         
         1. We have a good understanding of the flows to be tested for the Bronze release.
            1. Traffic use case has one
            2. O-DU will be planned out as well.
            3. T-lab has near Real time RIC.  We are getting close to making the test flow calls.
            4. Integration lab O-DU test hardware and cards are installed but we are having hardware compatibility issues. 

   4. Report out from PTL: Stand-Up & Report Out on Blockers - next week we will start to cover this list.  Are there any major items that anyone would like to raise to the TOC this week? 

      1. John Keeney Non-RealTime RIC (RAN Intelligent Controller) (NONRTRIC)

      2. Matti Hiltunen RIC Applications (RICAPP) 

         1. Matti: We got a two week extension for RIC App and simulator.  Looks like it will slide into the maintenance release.  We also don't have legal approval.  We have a couple xApps traffic steering use cases will be tested as a part of Bronze release.
            1. Jack: How many xApps do we have for people to evaluate?
            2. Matti: In Bronze there are 4.
               1. In Amber we had Mission Control.  There is a Hello World xApp on using a lot of featues.  There is a measure sApp.  We have two xApps traffic steering ML and QP.  One is Machine Learning xApp. Our extended code freeze deadline passed.  I want to move this to the maintenance release. 

      3. Thoralf Czichy RIC Platform (RIC) 

         1. Reviewed status on Jira items moved to Cherry.  The links are in the RIC Platform status report.
         2. Jack: Jinri is any of the O-CU code going to start making it back to the repos soon for the 5G?
         3. Jinri: I remember contribution started 15 May 2020 .  Action/ Jinri Huang talk about it this week.
         4. See status notes under "Status 2020-04-29 and 2020-04-30 and 2020-05-06 and 2020-05-12" in Bronze Release (Jun 2020)

      4. user-a934b O-RAN Centralized Unit (OCU) 

      5. Sachin Srivastava O-RAN Distributed Unit High (ODUHIGH)

      6. Zhimin Yuan O-RAN Distributed Unit Low (ODULOW)

      7. Martin Skorupski Operations and Maintenance (OAM)

      8. Alex Stancu Simulations (SIM)

      9. Xiaohua Zhang Infrastructure (INF)

      10. weichen ni Documentation (DOC)

      11. (TBD) O-RAN Radio Unit (ORU)

10. New Agenda Items (New Business): New Items Submitted (+speaker) & Open Call to TOC For Additional Items. 

    1. OAI/OSA purposed Meeting
       1. OSA community had a call.  Introductions and I talked about our proecss.  They talked about where they are in their process.
          1. Overall they were happy with us cleaning up the issue we had with our code.
          2. They would like to talk about a strategic alliance announcement agreement.  I made it clear that it's an O-RAN Alliance.  They asked about copyright use and access to the O-RAN specifications.  Software contributions can be pulled into the integration process.
          3. I described the Intel model on the O-DU.  There is a license issue.  
          4. In the end they were unable to articulate a very strong ask from us.  It is mostly from a copyright perspective.  Anyone who attended feel free to add or correct.  Jinri agrees.
          5. It would be great to have more code on a lower layer but that is hard to do.  They are going to go off and think about it and get back to us.  The next steps are between them and Zbynek.  
          6. I am hoping it will turn into something more for the universities that I talked to on the Power project.  Hopefully we will get more university participation.  Let Jack know if there are any other universities that will contribute.  We should look to expand.
    2. It was brought up as part of the TSC meeting and disucssed.  I don't control when they get to the topic.  Jinri was there for that discussion but I was not.  They didn't approve it they kicked it back for further discussion.
       1. Jinri: I didn't receive information from Viavi.  This is tentative.  I have forwarded this message during the TSC call.  They raised a request for two collaborations.  One is short term and the other is long term collaboration.  WGs, TSC, and OTIC.  TSC Co chair asked us how we want to use this from OSC perspective.  What software will OTIC and other WGs have?  We need to combine these requirements and discuss further before presenting to Viavi.

11. Planning for Next Meeting

12. Any Other Business (AOB) 

13. Meeting Summary (resolutions, new action items, etc.)

    1. Votes:
       1. The minutes of the prior meetings were reviewed, and there were no comments, questions or corrections.
          1. Vote to approve minutes for 06 May 2020 
          2. On motion made by Juha Oravainen
          3. Seconded by user-2057e
          4. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed
       2. Vote on including O-RAN Distributed Unit Low (ODULOW) in the Bronze Release.
          1. On motion made by Ganesh Shenbagaraman for the O-DU LOW contribution made by 01 Jun 2020  to the repos.
          2. user-2057e seconded the motion
          3. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed
    2. Actions
       1. Action/ William DIEGO update on the coordination with the O-RAN test group
       2. Action/ William DIEGO and user-59b16 lead the effort for the simulator and coordinate the Viavi participation.
       3. Action/ Jinri Huang status of code contribution to the O-CU effort.