Highlights - Features and Improvements

The sixth release of SD-RAN project brings three major highlights to the RIC and 5G RAN, (1) updating xApps to enable O-RAN E2SM-RC instead of using ONF E2SMs, (2) updating SD-RAN OAI 5G RAN stack to work with SD-RAN RIC, and (3) integrating Aether-OnRamp blueprint for enhanced SD-RAN deployment.

In this release, we integrated the official O-RAN E2SM RC service model (v1.02.03). We accordingly replaced the underlying service models at PCI, MLB, and MHO xApps from ONF community E2SMs such as E2SM RC-Pre and MHO to the official O-RAN E2SM RC service model. This is to expand SD-RAN coverage, so that RAN vendors or users/developers can use/test more official O-RAN SM features. SD-RAN 1.4 release has the only one use-case that exploits the official O-RAN SM - KPIMON xApp running with O-RAN E2SM KPM. However, from this SD-RAN 1.5 release, there are four use-cases leveraging the the official O-RAN SM - KPIMON (with KPM), PCI, MHO, and MLB (with RC). The following table summarizes the use-cases and their service models.

In addition, this release supports one more RAN stack ONF/OAI 5G RAN stack. Although previous SD-RAN releases also provide the OAI RAN stack option, it is just 4G RAN stack with the official O-RAN E2SM KPM and the Aether community E2SM RSM service models. We implemented the E2 agent to the OAI RAN stack and pushed it to our ONF/OAI repository. As of now, this RAN stack supports the official O-RAN E2SM KPM service model with plans to support the RSM service model in the future.

We added a new Aether-OnRamp blueprint, SD-RAN blueprint, for deployment automation of this SD-RAN release. This more closely aligns SD-RAN with overall Aether Project, i.e., a user/developer can deploy a set of SD-RAN components along with the other Aether services such as SD-Core, ROC, etc. over the same cluster. Of course, SD-RAN already has an automation tool called sdRan-in-a-Box (RiaB), which could create a local Kubernetes cluster and deploy SD-RAN components on top of that. However, this is not supported as an Aether-wide project, but is specifically for SD-RAN project deployments only - a local tool. Aether-OnRamp is an Aether-wide project tool to deploy Aether components with the same environment. Thus, we integrated SD-RAN into Aether-OnRamp. Even though RiaB is currently still active and valuable for the 4G OAI deployment automation, we will deprecate it in future releases and enrich the Aether-OnRamp SD-RAN blueprint for the complete RiaB replacement.

In this release, SD-RAN does not support python-sdk for python-xApps due to the lack of developers/engineers/maintainers. Sometime in the future, if we can get more resources, we will resume python-based project. At this time, we will pause and deprecate it.

In this release, we started using Github Action for our CI. Previously, we used Jenkins for CI/CD to build/test code, package images/helm charts, and to publish them, however, this was too slow, as Jenkins job provisions AWS VM and run script. In order to reduce this delay, we replaced Jenkins with Github Action, which is significantly faster. From a cost perspective, Github Action is much better since it does not limit the Action quota for the open-source project and enables us to fully utilize the Github Action features.

Summary:

• Update xApp and SM to support O-RAN E2SM-RC

• Introduce Aether-OnRamp SD-RAN

• Integrated 5G OAI CU/DU

• Deprecating Python-based xApps and python-sdk

• CI - Jenkins → Github action

Test

• All existing tests were dropped - see the known issues.

• Unit test / CI is migrated to Github Action.

Deployment

• When using RiaB, please refer to RiaB documentation in docs.sdran.org.

• When using Aether-OnRamp, please refer to Aether-OnRamp SD-RAN documentation in docs.sdran.org.

• For hardware setup, please check the Hardware installation doc in docs.sdran.org.

Documentation

• All release documentation is available at docs.sd-ran.org.

Known Issues

• xApp A1 policy consistent problem: a new A1-enabled xApp should not be added if there are already A1 policies added. If it happens, the new xApp is unable to get the old A1 policies already added. The new xApp only has the A1 policies which are pushed after the xApp is deployed.

• ONOS-E2T is not perfectly working with Viavi simulator.

• SD-RAN/OAI CU/DU does not have the latest OAI code.

• All integration, smoke, E2E tests were disabled. In the next release, we will try to make one by one with Github Action.

Component Versions