O-RAN Technical Steering Committee (TSC) & Workgroups

Hana Gazoli   July 28, 2021

After having looked at the O-RAN Alliance approach, philosophy, timelines, and detailed internal architecture, we will now provide an overview of the O-RAN Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and the Workgroups (WGs).

Figure 1: The O-RAN Alliance Technical Steering Committee (TSC)

Let’s start with an overview of TSC. The TSC decides and provides guidance on O-RAN technical topics. In addition, it approves O-RAN specifications prior to board approval and publication. It consists of member representatives and the technical workgroup co-chairs, representing both members and contributors.

As shown in Figure 1, within the TSC, there are 10 Work Groups, 4 Focus Groups, an Open Source Community, and a Minimum Viable Plan Committee. Some of these are new additions to the TSC so they have been shown in red. Let’s start looking at them one by one, starting with the Work Groups (WGs).

Figure 2: O-RAN Work Groups and their objectives

Work Groups Overview

WG1 is the ‘Use Cases and Overall Architecture’ workgroup. It has the overall responsibility for the O-RAN architecture and use cases. It identifies tasks to be completed within the scope of the architecture & use cases and assigns task group leads to drive these tasks to completion while working across other O-RAN work groups.

WG2 is the ‘Non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller and A1 Interface’ workgroup. The primary goal of Non-RT RIC is to support non-real-time intelligent radio resource management, higher layer procedure optimization, policy optimization in RAN, and providing AI/ML models to Near-RT RIC.

WG3 is the ‘Near-Real-Time RIC and E2 Interface’ workgroup. The focus of this workgroup is to define an architecture based on Near-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller, which enables near-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources via fine-grained data collection and actions over E2 interface.

WG4 is the ‘Open Fronthaul Interfaces’ workgroup. The objective of this workgroup is to deliver truly open fronthaul interfaces, in which multi-vendor DU-RRU interoperability can be realized.

WG5 is the ‘Open F1, W1, E1, X2, Xn Interfaces’ workgroup. The objective is to provide fully operable multi-vendor profile specifications, compliant with the 3GPP specifications, for F1, W1, E1, X2 & Xn interfaces. If a limitation is discovered, then this workgroup will propose 3GPP specification enhancements. It should be noted that X2 is a fundamental interface that is needed for Open RAN 4G or LTE networks to work seamlessly.

WG6 is the ‘Cloudification and Orchestration’ workgroup that seeks to drive the decoupling of RAN software from the underlying hardware platforms. It also aims to produce technology and reference designs that would allow commodity hardware platforms to be leveraged for all parts of a RAN deployment, including the CU and the DU.

WG7 is the ‘White-Box Hardware’ workgroup whose objective is to specify and release a complete reference design to foster a decoupled software and hardware platform. The promotion of open reference design hardware is a potential way to reduce the cost of 5G deployments which will benefit both the operators and vendors.

WG8 is the ‘Stack Reference Design’ workgroup whose aim is to develop the software architecture, design, and release plan for O-RAN Central Unit (O-CU) and O-RAN Distributed Unit (O-DU) based on the O-RAN and 3GPP specifications for the NR protocol stack.

WG9 is the ‘Open X-Haul Transport’ workgroup. It focuses on the transport domain, consisting of transport equipment, physical media, control, and management protocols associated with the transport network.

Finally, we have WG10, ‘OAM and O1 Interface’. This workgroup is responsible for the OAM requirements, OAM architecture and the O1 interface. All these activities were part of workgroup 1 earlier but have now been moved to WG10 after its formation.

Focus Groups Overview

In addition, there are four Focus Groups as we saw earlier. Focus Groups deal with topics that are over-arching the technical workgroups or are relevant for the whole organization.

The Standard Development Focus Group (SDFG) plays the leading role in working out the standardization strategies of O-RAN Alliance and is the main interface to other Standard Development Organizations (SDOs) that are relevant for O-RAN work. It also coordinates incoming and outgoing liaison statements.

The Test & Integration Focus Group (TIFG) defines O-RAN’s overall approach for testing and integration, including coordination of test specifications across various WGs. This may include creating end-to-end test and integration specifications; profiles to facilitate O-RAN productization, operationalization and commercialization; approaches to meet general requirements; and specifications of processes for performing integration and solution verification.

The Open Source Focus Group (OSFG) is responsible for dealing with open source-related issues for the O-RAN Alliance. Its responsibilities include the planning, preparation and establishment of an O-RAN open-source community, development of open source-related strategy, and coordination with other open-source communities etc.

Finally, we have the Security Focus Group (SFG) which focuses on security aspects of the Open RAN ecosystem. It collects the security requirements and solutions from all other WGs, negotiates as necessary to ensure uniform requirements and designs among the relevant WGs, thereby ensuring a standardized security architecture, specifies security requirements, architectures, and frameworks in support of open interfaces defined by other O-RAN WGs and finally, it publishes security guidelines that span across the entire O-RAN architecture.

Conclusion

Having discussed the TSC and the workgroups, we will now turn our attention to discuss each workgroup and their deliverables in the future blog posts. In the meantime, please see the video below, which details the TSC and the workgroups.

O-RAN Technical Steering Committee (TSC) & Workgroups