Release H

Owned by John Keeney (Ericsson EST)
Last updated: Jan 11, 2024
7 min read

Summary

Release H - Highlights

  • Consolidated & Improved RAN PM data exposure in new repo for RAN PM functions
    • Adds 4 new services for RAN PM processing
    • Lots of work on deployment scripts/charts, testing, CI, and documentation
  • (R1) Service Exposure & Management (SME)
    • CAPIF Aligned Service Registry & Discovery
    • Continued work of Service execution platform extensions (K8s, Istio, Keycloak, OPA, Gateway) to enable and enforce service isolation & exposure
    • Controlled access & exposure of service to/from rApps
  • (R1) Data Management & Exposure (DME)
    • Small updates to Information Coordination Service – studying alignment with R1 proposals
    • File-based PM data → Kafka/InfluxDB/Minio
      • Including parsing, filtering & delivery
      • ref. PM Data exposure above
  • rApp Management
    • Started work on a new rApp Manager functions – more in next release
    • LCM for rApps: Building on ONAP “Automation Composition” model & platform to implement rApp use cases
      • Added a 'KServe Participant’
        • Inference Services in rApps
        • Now supports KServe-based AI/ML rApps
      • Added an ‘A1 Policy Participant’
    • Overlap with Service Exposure work to examine role of an rApp Manager to support controlled access to and exposure of Services
    • Overlap with Data Exposure work to examine role of an rApp Manager to support controlled access to and exposure of Data types
  • Continued A1-Policy & A1-Enrichment-Information evolution (& R1-A1)
    • A1-Policy work in ONAP (continues in ONAP London) - candidate for R1-A1(P)
      • Numerous updates to improve security
      • Improved support fine-grained policy-based access control
      • Removed DMaaP NBI
    • A1-EI management as part of DME - candidate for how to include A1-EI in R1-DME
      • ref. DME work above
  • Demonstrated ASD-based CNF LCM
    • ONAP SO CNFM in standalone mode
  • Sample use cases (rApps)
    • Requirements Drivers for rApp/R1 development
  • Testing, Maintenance & Housekeeping
    • 3PP update – esp. Springboot 3 & JDK 17
    • Function Test & Integration Test environment,
      • Lots of new test cases, and new ONAP L & OSC H test profiles
    • Continue integration, deployment & configuration of SMO/Non-RT-RIC related functions & usecases in OSC Integration environment.
    • Project coordination, Documentation, Delivery, Reporting, Cross-project alignment, Community demos, O-RAN Standardization support, etc.

Release H - Tasks

Count of Epics (20 issues), User Stories, Tasks, and Issues:  (455 issues)
Relevant Epics:

Wiki: https://lf-o-ran-sc.atlassian.net/wiki/display/RICNR/

Latest Architecture: Release H Architecture

Components: Release H Components

Tasks / Backlog / JIRA: https://jira.o-ran-sc.org/projects/NONRTRIC/issues

Weekly Meetings: Meetings

Gerrit / Source Code

Sonar / Test Coverage Reports

Docs

Testing

Release H - Studies


Release H - Demos:


  • H-Release: Demonstration: "LCM of ASD-based CNFs using ONAP CNFM function in Standalone mode"
    See Video (HD), Video (SD) and Slides for more information

  • H-Release: Demonstration: "CAPIF for Service Registration & Service Discovery"
    See Video (HD), Video (SD) and Slides for more information

Release H - Container images

Release H - Deployment Instructions

Latest Architecture (Release H)


NONRTRIC Components (Release H)

  1. Non-RT-RIC Control Panel

  2. Non-RT-RIC (Spring Cloud) Service Gateway
  3. Non-RT-RIC (Kong) Service Exposure Prototyping
  4. A1 Policy Management Service
  5. Information Coordinator Service
  6. DMaaP/Kafka Information Producer Adapters
  7. NONRTRIC CAPIF Core (Service Registry)
  8. Initial Non-RT-RIC App Catalogue
  9. A1 Policy Controller / Adapter
  10. A1 Interface Simulator
  11. RAN PM functions
  12. Initial K8S Helm Chart LCM Manager
  13. Authentication Support (JWT Token Fetch)
  14. Test Framework
  15. "Helloworld" O-RU Fronthaul Recovery use case
  16. "Helloworld" O-DU Slice Assurance use case
  17. "Healthcheck" use case

NONRTRIC Control Panel (Release H)

Graphical user interface to interact with the Non-RT-RIC services.

With the OSC NONRTRIC Control Panel you can: 

NONRTRIC (Spring Cloud) Service Gateway (Release H)

Enable Apps and the Control Panel to use A1 Services

NONRTRIC (Kong) Service API Gateway (Release H)

Support Apps to use NONRTRIC, SMO and other App interfaces through a gateway

  • Support dynamic registration and exposure of service interfaces to Non-RT-RIC applications (& NONRTRIC Control panel)
  • Extends a static gateway function specifically for NONRTRIC Control panel
  • Initial version based on Kong gateway function
  • Initial exposure candidates include A1 (NONRTRIC) services & O1 (OAM/SMO) services

A1 Policy Management Service (from ONAP CCSDK – London)

A1 Policy Controller Service above A1 Adapter that provides:

  • Unified REST APIs for managing A1 Policies in all near-RT-RICs
  • Operations:
    • Query A1 Policy Types in near-RT-RICs
    • Create/Query/Update/Delete A1 Policy Instances in near-RT-RICs
    • Query Status for A1 Policy Instances
  • Maintains (persistent) cache of RAN’s A1 Policy information
    • Support RAN-wide view of A1 Policy information
    • Streamline A1 traffic
    • Enable (optional) re-synchronization after inconsistencies / near-RT-RIC restarts
    • Added support for multiple near-RT-RICs (& multi-version support)
  • Converged ONAP & O-RAN-SC A1 Adapter/Controller functions in ONAP SDNC/CCSDK
    • (Optionally deploy without A1 Adapter to connect direct to near-RT-RICs)
  • Support for different Southbound connectors per near-RT-RIC - e.g. different A1 versions, different near-RT-RIC version, different A1 adapter/controllers supports different or proprietary A1 controllers/EMSs

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

Information Coordinator Service (ICS) (Release H)

A service that coordinates Information Jobs, producers and consumers. Also acts as an A1 Enrichment Information Controller.

ICS is a data subscription service which decouples data producers from data consumers. A data consumer can create a data subscription (Information Job) without any knowledge of its data producers (one subscription may involve several data producers). A data producer has the ability to produce one or several types of data (Information Type). One type of data can be produced by zero to many producers.


A data consumer can be an R-App using R1 APIs, or a near-RT RIC using the A1-EI API (where the subscribed data is more specifically called "Enrichment Information").
A data consumer can have several active data subscriptions (Information Job). One Information Job consists of the type of data to produce and additional parameters, which may be different for different data types. These parameters is not defined or limited by this service and may for instance include:

  • Parameters related to delivery (Kafka stream, callback URL etc.). These are different for different delivery protocols.
  • Filtering information (scope, filter or other discriminators).
  • Periodicity
  • Other info used for aggregation

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

DMaaP/Kafka Information Producer Adapters (Release H)

Configurable mediators to take information from DMaaP (& Kafka) and present it as a coordinated Information Producer

Two alternative implementations to allow Information Consumers to consume DMaaP or Kafka events as coordinated Information Jobs.
These configurable adapters/mediators act producers of Information Coordinator Service (ICS) jobs by polling topics in DMaaP Message Router (MR) or Kafka and pushing the messages to a consumer.

CAPIF Service Registry (Release H)

Implementing a CAPIF service for Service registration, discovery, administration (SME)

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

NONRTRIC rApp catalog (Release H)

Register for NONRTRIC APPs (rApps)

  • rApps can be registered / queried

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

A1 Policy Controller / Adapter (from ONAP CCSDK – London)

Optional mediation point for A1 Policy interface termination in SMO/NONRTRIC

  • Implemented as CCSDK OSGI Feature/Bundles
  • A1 REST southbound
  • RESTCONF Northbound
  • NETCONF YANG > RESTCONF adapter
  • Mapping logic / Provider
  • Can be included in an any controller based on ONAP CCSDK

Documentation about the adapter / controller can be found at:

A1 Interface Simulator (Release H)

Stateful A1 test stub

  • Used to create multiple stateful A1 providers (simulated near-rt-rics)
  • Supports A1-Policy (A1-P) and A1-Enrichment Information (A1-EI)
  • Implemented as a Python application
  • Swagger-based northbound interface, so easy to change the A1 profile exposed (e.g. A1 version, A1 Policy Types, A1-EI consumers, etc)
  • All A1-AP versions supported

  • Call-out feature to add applications-specific A1-Policy behaviors (REST & Kafka call-outs supported)

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

RAN Performance Monitoring Functions (File-based PM)

Functions to collect/parse/filter/store/forward file-based & event-based RAN PM data

  • End-to-end tool-chain to collection, parsing, filtering and delivery of file-based RAN PM observability data.
  • PM report data format defined by 3GPP (TS 32.432 and 3GPP TS 32.435)
  • High performance, fully scalable
  • Subscribers (e.g. rApps) can subscribe for chosen measurement types from specific resources in the network

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

RAN PM: PM Data File Collector

RAN PM: PM File Converter 

RAN PM: PM Producer

RAN PM: InfluxDB PM Logger

Authentication Support (JWT Token Fetch) (Release H)

A side-car utility service to takes care of authentication token fetching from Keycloak

  • Simplifies authentication in for services

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

Initial K8S Helm Chart LCM Manager (Release H)

Onboard, start, stop, and modify Non-RT-RIC App µServices as Helm Charts

A building block for coming releases as the rApp concept matures

  • Interfaces that accepts Non-RT-RIC App µServices Helm Charts
  • Support basic LCM operations
  • Onboard, Start, Stop, Modify, Monitor
  • Initial version co-developed with v. similar functions in ONAP
  • Limited functionality/integration for now

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

NONRTRIC Test Platform (Release H)

Information about the test platform can be found at:

Use Cases (Release H)

"Helloworld" O-RU Fronthaul Recovery use case

A very simplified closed-loop rApp use case to re-establish front-haul connections between  O-DUs and O-RUs if they fail. Not intended to to be 'real-world'

Information about the use case can be found at:

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

"Helloworld" O-DU Slice Assurance use case

A very simplified closed-loop rApp use case to re-prioritize a RAN slice's radio resource allocation priority if sufficient throughput cannot be maintained. Not intended to to be 'real-world'

Information about the use case can be found at:

Repository and documentation about the service can be found at:

"Healthcheck" use case

A very simplified rApp use case to check if A1 Policy connection to a near-rt-ric exists & is healthy. Not intended to to be 'real-world'