What are the O-RAN Alliance workgroups ?

The O-RAN specification work has been divided into technical Work Groups (WG), all of them under the supervision of the Technical Steering Committee. There are 11 work groups (WGs. Each of the technical workgroups covers a part of the Open RAN architecture.

• WG1: Use Cases and Overall Architecture Work Group

It has overall responsibility for the O-RAN Architecture and Use Cases. WG 1 identifies tasks to be completed within the scope of the Architecture and Use Cases and assigns Task Group leads to drive these tasks to completion while working across other O-RAN Work Groups.

• WG2: The Non-Real-Time RAN Intelligent

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: The Near-Real-Time RIC

The focus of this WG is to define an architecture based on Near-Real-Time Radio Intelligent Controller (Near-RT RIC), which enables near-real-time control and optimization of RAN elements and resources via fine-grained data collection and actions over E2 interface.

• WG4: The Open Fronthaul Interfaces Work Group

The objective of this WG is to deliver truly open fronthaul interfaces, in which multi-vendor DU-RRU interoperability can be realized.

• WG5: The Open F1/W1/E1/X2/Xn Interface Work Group

The objective of this WG is to provide fully operable multi-vendor profile specifications (which shall be compliant with 3GPP specification) for F1/W1/E1/X2/Xn interfaces and in some cases will propose 3GPP specification enhancements.

• WG6: The Cloudification and Orchestration Work Group

The cloudification and orchestration WG seeks to drive the decoupling of RAN software from the underlying hardware platforms and 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: The White-box Hardware Work Group

The promotion of open reference design hardware is a potential way to reduce the cost of 5G deployment that will benefit both the operators and vendors. The objective of this Work Group is to specify and release a complete reference design to foster a decoupled software and hardware platform.

• WG8: Stack Reference Design Work Group

The aim of this WG is to develop the software architecture, design, and release plan for the O-RAN Central Unit (O-CU) and O-RAN Distributed Unit (O-DU) based on O-RAN and 3GPP specifications for the NR protocol stack.

• WG9: Open X-haul Transport Work Group

This WG focuses on the transport domain, consisting of transport equipment, physical media and control/management protocols associated with the transport network.

• WG10: OAM Work Group

This WG is responsible for the OAM requirements, OAM architecture and the O1 interface.

• WG11: Security Work Group
This WG focuses on security aspects of the open RAN ecosystem.

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