Scope
FlexRAN is a vRAN reference implementation for virtualized cloud-enabled radio access networks. FlexRAN is not an open-source project. It is provided here as an example of a 5G application running on INF.
This document provides details on how to build FlexRAN software for INF, generate a containerized version of the prebuilt FlexRAN binaries, and deploy on INF solution.
Note:
The steps in this guide are based on FlexRAN 22.03. The instructions are subject to change in future releases of FlexRAN.
And only CentOS based INF image is verified.
Intended Audience
The intended audience for this document are software engineers and system architects who want to design and develop 5G systems using the O-RAN Specifications based on FlexRAN and INF platform.
AIO Simplex Installation
Prepare USB stick with INF CentOS based Installation ISO
Get INF CentOS based Installation ISO from following location:
Burn the image to a USB stick:
Be sure to use the correct USB device name when copying the image.
dd if=inf-image-centos-all-x86-64.iso of=/dev/sdc bs=1M
Follow the installation guide
In addition to the Hardware Requirements for INF (INF is a downstream project of StarlingX, and the requirements are the same as StarlingX), you will need the following hardware for FlexRAN applications.
Minimum Requirement | All-in-one Controller Node |
---|---|
Minimum processor class | Single-CPU Intel Xeon Cascade Lake (14 nm) or IceLake (10 nm) |
Minimum memory | 64 GB single socket |
Minimum network ports | OAM: 1x1GE, If only test timer mode, no other NIC required. |
BIOS settings |
|
Accelerator Card | Mt. Bryce ACC100 (Intel eASIC chip which can be mounted on third party card) |
The FlexRAN application on INF has been tested on Intel Reference Hardware platform: Coyote Pass (housing ICX-SP).