The Open Networking Foundation(ONF) is pleased to announce that it has achieved its first milestone in the SMaRT-5G project with the successful demonstration of an intelligent cell on/off RAN energy savings application(rApp) that works hand-in-hand with a traffic steering application(xApp), ensuring quality of service while optimizing RAN energy consumption.

These Integrated xApp and rApp applications, implemented entirely in open source, will first be demonstrated at Fyuz, October 9-11 in Madrid, Spain.

"Energy Saving and Traffic Steering are two of the most important use cases for the mobile industry, and for the first time the ONF community has collaborated to create a single demonstration that combines these use cases in a unified open source solution," said Sarat Puthenpura, Chief Architect Open RAN, ONF.

In this demonstration, the RAN Simulator simulates a working network supporting O-RAN specified interfaces, modeling two cells(cell-1 and cell-2) located in the same sector and providing overlapping coverage. 

Normally cell-1 and cell-2 share network load. The ES-rApp proactively monitors the load on both cells via O1 and determines if the capacity cell(cell-2) is underutilized and can be powered off such that cell-1 can take over the load without any performance degradation. 

If so, the rApp commands the TS-xApp via A1, to move the traffic served by cell-2 to cell-1 such that cell-2 can be idled temporarily, thereby making the cell a candidate for shutdown. The redirection of load from one cell to another is seamless and does not impact end user experience.

Once the xApp has completed steering all the traffic to cell-1, the rApp will subsequently shutdown cell-2(via the O1 interface). 

The rApp will then continue to monitor the load on cell-1 and once cell-1 load is above a predefined threshold, cell-2 is reactivated via O1 and the load is rebalanced between the two cells ensuring performance is maintained and without impact to the end user experience.

"Mobile network energy consumption is a critical industry-wide issue and we are pleased to be collaborating with the SMaRT-5G community to introduce our innovative O-RAN enabled x-App/r-App applications," said Marcin Dryjanski, CEO, Rimedo Labs. 

"We are excited to have facilitated the successful Integration and verification of this first phase of the SMaRT-5G project which offers a significant milestone in addressing an important mobile operator network challenge," said Mariusz Rudnicki, vRAN Ecosystem Sales Director, Tietoevry.