RICtest: O-RAN E2 Nodes Emulation Solution for RAN Intelligent Controller Testing

Validating 5G RAN Optimization at Scale

5G functionalities like radio access network (RAN) functional splits, control plane and user plane separation (CUPS) and network slicing require advanced monitoring and analytical capabilities to configure, optimize, and control the RAN infrastructure at the edge.

The RAN intelligent controller (RIC) functional entity provides advanced control capabilities, enabling increased efficiency and better radio resource management by leveraging analytics and data-driven operations to optimize access network utilization. The RIC consists of a near-real time controller (Near-RT RIC) that implements functionalities requiring low latency and a non-real-time controller (Non-RT RIC) for operations without stringent latency needs. The near-real time RIC software platform provides a cloudbased infrastructure to host various applications (xApps) for controlling a distributed set of RAN elements (eNB, gNB, CU, DU) over the E2 interface from the O-RAN Alliance.

Keysight’s RICtest solution emulates all E2 node types standardized by the working group 3 (WG3) of the O-RAN Alliance for testing RIC functionalities  at any scale.

The solution supports thousands of E2 connections and is ideal for network vendors who want to test the scalability of their RIC architectures. This cloudnative solution supports the CU user plane (CU-UP) / CU control plane (CUCP) split and both 5G non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) topologies.

Testing RIC functionalities at scale over the E2 interface

•Supports all standardized E2 node types, at configurable mix and quantity

•Emulates thousands of E2 connections

•Emulates tens of thousands  of active devices

•Cloud-native solution

• 5G NSA / SA topologies

Simulating Any O-RAN E2 Topology

Keysight RICtest is the perfect companion to perform large-scale emulation of all possible node types connected to the near-RT RIC over the E2 interface, as defined in O-RAN Alliance WG3: 

• O-eNB

• O-gNB

• combined O-DU and O-CU

• combined O-DU and split O-CU-CP / O-CU-UP

RICtest enables you to configure the emulated nodes including node types, node number, user equipment (UE) number and distribution, and UE traffic models.

Seamless Integration of 3rd Party xAPPs

Near-RT RIC hosted xApp applications use E2 nodes services to increase network efficiency, optimize network resources, and enable you to provide more reliable services. xApp applications are independent from the Near-RT RIC and can come from any third-party. There can be many different types of xApps, making it difficult to define a common set of valuable information over the E2 interface to test these applications. RICtest offers a Traffic Model configurator that you can tune to provide the specific measurements of interest to an xApp application, at volumes that are impossible to achieve in a real end-to-end lab setting.

Topology User Interface

RICtest features an easy-to-use web-based graphical user interface (GUI), shown in. Test scenario configuration is immediate thanks to the topology structure where you can define the needed E2 nodes and quickly set them up, together with UE ranges, traffic profiles, and traffic patterns.

A dashboard provides the main statistics for you to monitor the test execution and analyze the results.