Open source software expected to drive open RAN deployments
Summary
This shift was enabled by open source developments such as OpenStack that delivered a common cloud computing infrastructure software. In addition to confirming that most of the industry believe it is practical to virtualize a 5G baseband function for commercial deployment within two years, the survey also covered the software infrastructure to run RAN applications, as shown in the figure below. As open RAN-based systems are designed and built, what does your organization anticipate using as the software infrastructure to run RAN applications? "The O-Cloud framework [within O-RAN] for all the different split models is sitting on top of an open source project called StarlingX," said Paul Miller, CTO at Wind River, when he spoke on the Light Reading "Accelerating Open RAN Platforms Operator Survey" webinar (view the archive here). That is a Kubernetes and bare metal first approach but it uses a highly distributed architecture that enables somebody to deploy 10s of 1000s of sites and manage them from a central pane of glass.