Technical Charter for O-RAN Software Community

2020 07 01

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		Weichen Ni	x
   Deutsche Telekom	David Streibl		Ondřej Hudousek
   Ericsson	John-Paul Lane	x	John Keeney
   NTT DOCOMO	Masafumi Masuda		Anil Umesh
   Nokia	Juha Oravainen	x	Thoralf Czichy
   Orange	William Diego	x	Vincent Danno
   Radisys	Ganesh Shenbagaraman		Sachin Srivastava	x
   Verizon	Viswa Kumar		Kristen Young

   *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 no corrections.
      1. Vote to approve minutes for 24 Jun 2020 
      2. On motion made by Juha Oravainen
      3. Seconded by John Paul
      4. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed

4. Review of Today's Agenda

5. Release Votes and Approval

6. Copyright updates
   1. Jack will get the new software specifications posted on the site.  The board had a meeting and approved.  The leadership was supportive and excited about the progress.  Virtual exhibition has some nice demos.
      1. John-Paul are there plans to make the Virtual Exhibition publicly accessible.
      2. Action/ John Murray will check the progress of making the Virtual Exhibition being made public. 
   2. Action/ Farheen Cefalu add a link to the LF analytics Insight on this page.

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

   1. Bronze Release PR

   2. Virtual Exhibition.

   3. OSC Logo status.

8. Status of Open Action Items (Old Business)

   1. Action / user-d3360 add the topic of license attributions to the agenda.  We want to start the pairwise testing.
   2. Action/ John Murray get clarification regarding transfer of AT&T Apache code into the new dual license repo
      1. Apache can be copy forward but we do not remove the Apache license.  We will move that to an inactive status and the Samsung contributions will be in the new license repo.

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

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

      1. Releases Cherry Release Planning

         1. We should be in the epic and what are the main end to end use cases.  

   2. user-59b16 Requirements Software Architecture Committee

      1. Sharing spreadsheet.
         1. OCU Epics.  These are the things we will do with O-CU.  WG8 epics for Cherry.  No Bronze pairwise testing with O-CU.  Still pairwise testing with O-CU High.
         2. OTF Epics. Planning resources for OTF. 
            1. Eliza some epics are lower priority for Cherry.  Also the deployment of xApps and rApps.  That is not here.  Eliza Celenti is coming up with a plan.  
            2. Rittwik will catch up David about call flow.
            3. David Kinsey  yes, we have to establish a timeline and xApp deployment.  We came up with a simple approach of a flow.  We want O-SC to have a Cherry requirement.  This will validate O2.  The app should be able to join with the RIC.
            4. user-59b16  will that touch non RTU RIC?
               1. David Kinsey not really.  You will have a piece of the SMO and xApp.  The non RT RIC is aware ahead of time and doesn't use A1 to discover.  We should have a discussion but may not be able to form epics.
            5. Non RT RIC is a requirement study.  
               1. You have to have some software.  Parts are at risk and others are not.  SDK will not be at risk.  The thing in the SMO that would manage the LCM would be at risk.  We are proposing it can be applied to MANO or ONAP but it would have to be downstream to provide real value.
               2. ACiton/ David Kinsey set up a meeting with Martin Skorupski to continue discussion.
         3. INF Epics
            1. StarlingX is the commercial apps.  Which part is commercialized?  I think StarlingX is what is being commercialized.  What we have with OSC is a derivative of that.
         4. NRT RIC has a lot of epics.  The epics come down to many things.  Some of it may happen in Cherry and some may not.  There is a priority list of High, medium, low.
            1. The PTL and the people need to manage their epics.  The key is to have the E2E use cases working.
            2. The ETE flows have not chained.  There were four health check flows. 
            3. We need to have a checklist of where we are with the end to end flows.  They are complex.  It is important that you give organization for each use case of where we are in the progress of that use check.
         5. We had a discussion on O-DU High on flows but because of resources and time we have to have a prioritized, stretched, and agressive plan to demonstrate significant progress to the overall flow.
         6. ODU-Low epics
         7. Simulator E2 simulator enhancements.  
         8. Traffic Steering xApp Bronze - Viavi decided to contribute access to some of their tools.  Add it to the agenda.  Be sure everyone understands what's available from the simulator. 
         9. What are the major advances that are significant to the E2E use cases.
            1. Get the pipeline working.  For Cherry it is ambitious to get the KPI-MON thru the xApp.  
            2. Mentality how do you get the data just in time and target a UE.  That's the E2E healthcheck validation.  See RSAC Cherry Release presentation.
            3. E2 service model may not be fully complete before sprint development starts.  This is pre-spec. so it will be a challenge.
         10. Healthcheck - The healthcheck flows will not change.  Components will have to adhere.  near RT RIC has not completed their flows.  It is up to the PTLs to take a look.  We need a score card or else we wont know where people are at.
         11. LCM - David is coming up with call flows.
         12. Jack - Does anyone want to add items to our E2E use case.  How do we show A1 functionality?  How do we demonstrate more of the A1 controller as part of the E2E use cases?
             1. John-Paul Is there something required for OR-Apps?
             2. Jack How do we pull cases together like rApps and getting the SDK in place and get rApps.  We have the pieces but to pull it all together we need to create 2 projects.  1 for SMO and who wants to contribute a model.  I want to open up a discussion to create an SMO project and elect a PTL to make an overall system gradually.  I do want people to think about it and who would want to participate in organizing it.  We need to start and manage contributions to it to get to the point of getting rApps in place.
             3. John-Paul If we had an ORApp.
             4. There is a Hello World that can be either rApp or OApp.
             5. We can list some of the code for the R1 interface.
             6. These need to go into more depth in the RSAC.  We can summarize here but the details.
             7. I am getting interest in O-DU Low project.  The question is how best to manage that.  I thought the most effective way is to treat them in parallel.  We can see how much code can be used across them.  There is interest and people will be joining in the next few weeks to discuss.
             8. Rittwik - I will update the spreadsheet.  When the planning is done it is up to the PTLs to run with it.
             9. Jack - The challenge in Cherry is to develop technology adding the O-1 interface and become more of a functional subsystem.  We will get O-CU code that will start to fill out those blocks.  Just because people are active in xApps we don't want to lose the focus of developing all the parts of the stack.  Each component should advance a certain amount in that release in coming up with an O-RAN system.
             10. PTLs think about advancing their modules and making it interoerable with the E2E flows.  We must make it a useful system where people can grab parts of the code and move the whole O-RAN community forward.  Try to make as much re-usable for the community as they leverage those products.  We've gotten through 2 releases and declared the paths we're on.  We have to listen to the larger community and grow participation of people using and contributing the code.  This will only happen if people and companys participate.  
             11. Think of how we can improve Cherry.  Look for ideas of how to improve how we work.  We need to grow and round out.  This is a group of small teams.  O-RAN Alliance is over 200 members we have to get more people to participate.  It is a project for wider participation including service providers not just generating specs but dealing with ramifications of using those specs.

   3. user-d3360  Integration and Test

      1. user-d3360  discuss general practice.
      2. user-d3360  Getting Started

   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)

      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. Discuss SMO 

11. is Planning for Next Meeting

12. Any Other Business (AOB) 

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

2020 06 24

Recording: 2020_06_24_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
   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	John Keeney

   *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 no corrections.
      1. Vote to approve minutes for 17 Jun 2020 
      2. On motion made by Jinri Huang
      3. Seconded by user-2057e
      4. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed

4. Review of Today's Agenda

5. Release Votes and Approval

   1. Samsung released the KPIMON xApp under Apache 2.0 license in the Amber release. However,  the team  has been advised by Samsung legal team that for the KPIMON enhancement in Bronze release should use O-RAN FRAND S/W license.  Since only one license is allowed within a repo and the repo name depends on the license, we request a new repo: scp/ric-app/kpimon. The committers are the same as the existing KPIMON repo.

      KPIMON xAPP:

      • Proposed repository name: scp/ric-app/kpimon.
      • License: O-RAN software license 
      • A brief description: This repo will host the source code for the KPIMON xApp. KPIMON uses E2SM (extended KPM service model) to collect information from the RAN and populate it in two name-spaces (one for cell metrics and other for UE metrics) in the RIC SDL layer.
      • A list of committers:
      1. Jeongyeob Oak, jy.oak@samsung.com, LFID: jyoak
         2. Jun Song, junhyuk.song@samsung.com, LFID: junny
         3. Jinwei.fan, jinwei.fan@samsung.com, LFID: jinwei.fan
      2. Jack This is a little different because of the dual license.  Is there someone from Samsung project?
      3. Matti: I submitted this request as a RICApp PTL.
      4. Jack: Will the old repo be reitired?  Will contributions be split because of dual licenses?  Do you know how we are going to treat the new license?
      5. Matti: I was wondering that my self.  There are contributions in Amber.  
      6. Jack: Once content is released under Apache the content stays.  Until we get clarification from Samsung, the way I would categorize is we are leaving the existing repo there and archiving it.  Active contributions will go to the new repo and stays in its form.
      7. Peter Moonki Hong: Can I have clarification?
      8. Jack: There has been a request for a new repo and the question I had was what will happen to the old repo.  Typically we would archive and close the old repo and have new repo contributions.
      9. Peter Moonki HOng: When it comes to KPI monitoring xApp we want to leave the repo as it is and archiving the repository.  We will stop contributing to the old repo and start contributing the new repo for KPI monitoring of xApps.
         1. On motion made by Peter Moonki Hong from Samsung to approve creating the new KPI monitor repo and archiving the existing one
         2. David: Was the archived repo Apache only contributed by other than Apache?
         3. Peter: Motivation is to change their direcition to the FRAND license.  
         4. DAvid: All the code is 100% contribution from Samsung.
         5. Matti:  It's copyright AT&T and Samsung. 
         6. David (DT): This is a lawyer question.  If it all code by one company then they can release under new license but if there is code from another company then needs clarification from lawyers.
         7. Jack: This is a new occurrence.  The AT&T code would still be under the Apache license and anyone can continue to use it going forward.  It is released under Apache.  To create the new repo it becomes a mixed repo that has pulled code from the Apache license and made into O-RAN license.  I'll have to get clarification on what that means.  Action/ John Murray get clarification regarding transfer of AT&T Apache code into the new dual license repo.  General rule in the past is the most restrictive license dictates the combined code follows the most restrictive license.
         8. Lusheng: Will AT&T continue contributing to the SCP repo?
         9. Matti: No we had the admission control xApp but the person who wrote the code has left AT&T.  I don't see any reason for the Amber release repo to carry on.
         10. Jack: It will be archived and the code is available for people to use.
         11. Lusheng: LF does support making a repo read only (archive) to use for the KPIMON.
         12. John Keeney: I presume it's possible for people who have branched the code can continue using?
         13. Jack: That's why it is archived.  It follows the Apache usage rules.  The new repo will use the new license with the new contributions with what they pull forward from Apache under O-RAN restrictions.
             1. On motion made by Peter Moonki Hong from Samsung to approve creating the new KPI monitor repo and archiving the existing one.
             2. Seconded by Jinri Huang
             3. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed
   2. Summary Bronze Release
      1. Lusheng: We have completed the remaining tasks for the release.  The detailed status is reported on the Bronze Release (Jun 2020)
         1. New Getting Started guide
      2. Jinri: Expresses his sincere gratitude for the hard work.
6. Copyright updates
   1. Jack: Did we get an official approval of the copyright yet?  
   2. Jinri: I believe the voting results have come out.  The EC has not announced.
   3. Jack: We will get clarification on the EC call today and let everyone on this team know about the copyright permission from the O-RAN Alliance material.

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

   1. Bronze Release PR

      1. Jinri: Preparation for the virtual exhibition is done.  I have the website link to the virtual exhibition.  There are 13 new demos uploaded to the O-RAN virtual exhibition website.  Among the 13 there is one from our open source community provided by Ericsson and their partners.
      2. Jack: Do you have to be an O-RAN member for the virtual space?
      3. Jinri: No it is a part of the O-RAN website.
      4. Jack: The Bronze PR activity is ongoing.

   2. Virtual Exhibition https://www.virtualexhibition.o-ran.org/

   3. 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
      1. Jack: There is an open item from for the EC to work with the test group on a discussion around the emulator/simulator needs.  We need to coordinate that.  I got an email but am not sure where we are in the process of meeting.  We need to meet to work out a longer approach.
   2. Action/ Jinri Huang notify the EC that the Bronze release has been voted on and approved.
   3. Action/ user-d3360 send Jinri your status slides.

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

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

      1. Bronze Timeline

         1. Maintenance release is avialable.
         2. Lusheng: We have a request from LF legal to have a formal process to address the use of external source code licenses?  Should we use specific attributions or use a blanket statement.  Action / user-d3360 add the topic of license attributions to the agenda.  We want to start the pairwise testing.
         3. Jack: Use the opportunity to do pairwise testing.
      2. Review Bronze Release Highlights

   2. user-59b16 Requirements Software Architecture Committee

      1. Our hope is to get the lab prepped by 6-30.  We want to get the KPIMON inserted.  We've asked Viavi to monitor a trace file that can be delivered by the end of the month we can make the use case more sophisticated.  That will lead to the Cherry release to run with a real time simulator.  We are counting on Viavi.
      2. The ML enabled traffic steering xApp I want to get a simulator of RAN topology.
      3. rApps and xApps will detail the onflows.  How do you deploy the rApp and put it in run time.  We also have to think about what kind of training and the training pipeline.
      4. How is O-CU going to talk to O-DU.  Introduction of SMO in regards to LCM and pre-release R-1 interface for Cherry will drive R-1 interface for Dawn.  
      5. R-1 interface is for introducing R-Apps.  It is still being discussed in O-RAN Alliance.  Some of it is pre-release and not set in stone.  We can drive requirements down and start the ball roling.  The DU Low and HIgh P7 is going to be integrated.  R-U, D-U, C-U is a challenge.  We've come up with a tentative plan of what the combined configuration.  We will attempt to attach one UE and have a functional RAN element working.  We have to get all the parameters and time.  With HARK disabled can we attach a UE?  It is important to get a functional end to end stack working.
      6. Lusheng: Do you mean simulated or physical UE?
      7. Rittwik: O-R is a simulated but with the real RAN we want a physical UE.
      8. Is there anything resembling and R-U stub for DU-Low?
      9. Rittwik: Yes, there is an R-U stub that is there already.  That is basic functionality.
      10. Tracy: I think you are aware that AT&T will use SMO in stages?  Is it ONAP based SMO?
          1. Rittwik: It will be ONAP based.
          2. I wanted to confirm the basic.
          3. Jack: The SMO is a big box that we've thrown some pieces in. It means different things to different people.  The O-RAN Alliance WG1 leaves it to implementation.  The challenge for us is to decide do we create a formal SMO project or not?  There could be more than one if there's enough support in the community or do we avoid that?  The issue we have to figure out is to make a working thing we need to pull together all the pieces.  If we wrap it with a SMO label.  How do we bring it forward enough so that companies understand how to use the pieces to wrap it together and see how somebody comes out with commercial implementation.  The work is useful if it ends up with multiple providers across the globe.
          4. Tracy: The SMO are components or subset of building blocks.  It has a few components some are being added and dependent on contributor support.
          5. Jack: The SMO needs to be provided by the software community to do the work.  
          6. Tracy: AT&T is not the only operator who wants to start implementing the Phase 1 SMO and have some reassurance that phase 2 SMO can be built on phase 1 SMO.
          7. Jack: Industry trends company's lose interest.  The SMO has to support a range of functionality but also make it easy for this community to build, test, demonstrate and move the community forward.  We will cue this up for the next discussion.
          8. Jack: How are we going to approach pulling the SMO pieces together.  Continue to get the O-DU moving forward.  Looking at how the O-DU and O-CU work together.  What about the O-RU?  Those are more targeted discussions.  As we mature a lot of discussions become complex.
          9. Jinri: TSC requested we work Acumos team for near Real Time RIC development.  
          10. Jack: I will get someone from the project give a presentation here.

   3. user-d3360  Integration and Test

   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)

      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. 

11. Planning for Next Meeting

12. Any Other Business (AOB) 

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

    1. Votes
       1. On motion made by Peter Moonki Hong from Samsung to approve creating the new KPI monitor repo and archiving the existing one.
          1. Seconded by Jinri Huang
          2. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed
       2. Vote to approve minutes for 17 Jun 2020 
          1. On motion made by Jinri Huang
          2. Seconded by user-2057e
          3. VOTE: Vote taken, item passed
    2. Actions

Archived Meetings