Energy Efficiency System Architecture

In the Energy Efficiency research project, we are interested in Open RAN wireless networks based on ​O-RAN Alliance specifications.

Figure 1 shows the overall O-RAN Architecture. The Radio Access Network (RAN) consists of the O-RU, O-DU, O-CU and Near-RT RIC. When energy savings optimization is applied, most of the energy savings comes from the RAN.

Figure 1. Overall O-RAN Architecture

Figure 2 shows the system architecture to be used for O-RAN Energy Efficiency testing. Each of the VNF/CNF components are hosted on servers depicted with dotted lines. All servers and physical equipment (such as O-RU) have electric power supplied via Power Distribution Units (PDU) which can measure the power consumption.

Figure 2. System architecture for O-RAN Energy Efficiency testing.

Figure 3 shows the system architecture to be used at Winlab leveraging software modules from OpenAirInterface (OAI), Amarisoft, Open5GS, BubbleRAN MX-PDK. Note that some servers host multiple components. The system includes SDR-based O-RU (OAI, USRP) as well as physical O-RU units from LiteOn and VVDN. The UE devices include Android phones, USB modems, and the Amarisoft-based UE-Emulator.

Figure 3. System architecture for O-RAN Energy Efficiency testing at Winlab.