Rajarajan Sivaraj will describe the foundational principles of the O-RAN architecture, with details on interfaces, components, and standardization activities.
Hey everyone. I'm relatively new to the world of 5G and just wanted to ask what might seem like a dumb question... but what is an "interface" in this context? It's obviously not an interface in the sense of an ethernet interface or anything like that. But the terms E1 and F1 are a little confusing. When he says that the E1 interface exists between The O-CU-CP and the O-CU-UP - what is this? Are there literal bits on a wire between two components like a hello packet or an BGP update? Or is it more abstract? Is it like a common format of communication between these components? e.g. each side agrees to communicate using a particular format so that they can understand each other? If so, what form does this "format" take - is it similar to the format of an ethernet frame where the headers are expected at certain byte counts and then interpreted as such. Or is it like a higher layer protocol involving updates of a particular type to be commonly agreed upon and interpreted by either side? Sorry I'm hoping these questions make sense. I very much come from the "OSI model, layers 1-7, bits on a wire with an IGP running over it" kind of world, and making the pivot to 5G is proving challenging. Great video though :)
Yes, they are standardized, but due to lack of implementing them as open interfaces without the necessity of having multi-vendor inter-operability between the CU-CP and CU-UP, and between CU-CP and DU in legacy products, there could be proprietary closed implementations of the F1/E1 interfaces, unless they talk to other vendors, which is the point of opening them up (which O-RAN focuses on)
