Digital twin platform powers AI and 6G Open RAN research
The O-RAN ALLIANCE and the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things at Northeastern University have successfully concluded the seed funding initiative, launched in November 2023, to support research and development of next-generation 6G open Radio Access Network (RAN) infrastructure.
The funding initiative was led by the next Generation Research Group (nGRG) within the O-RAN ALLIANCE. Its objective was to provide a forum to facilitate O-RAN-related 6G research efforts and determine how O-RAN may evolve to support mobile wireless networks in the 6G timeframe and beyond by leveraging industry and academic 6G research efforts worldwide. The purpose of the seed funding was to enable broader funding of research platforms for next-generation infrastructure.
As the funding awardee, the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things at Northeastern University received a $ 200,000 sponsorship to enhance its Colosseum lab and research platform. This resulted in a comprehensive, automated O-RAN Digital Twin (O-DT) platform designed for the research community to accelerate innovation at the intersection of AI, open RAN and network optimisation.
With just a few clicks, the O-DT platform enables researchers to deploy O-RAN-based networks, including base stations, user equipment, and Radio Intelligent Controllers (RICs). The platform automatically initiates data collection, training, and testing pipelines for RIC-based xApps and rApps, playing a key role in the continuous validation of open-source protocol stacks. It is also ready to support the future development of dApps for real-time network control and other cutting-edge use cases.
“The O-RAN ALLIANCE seed funding supported the efforts to advance Colosseum into a state-of-the-art platform that effectively enables the research community to develop innovations for the RAN,” said Michele Polese, Research Assistant Professor at Northeastern University and PI of the O-RAN O-DT project. “This initiative has sparked the creation of new solutions to tackle the next fundamental challenge toward fully realizing the Open RAN vision, such as intelligent and dynamic network control and optimisation.”
“These research outcomes form the basis for future specification development within the O-RAN ALLIANCE, enabling a global market of scaled, innovative and competitive solutions, advancing our mission towards an open, intelligent, virtualised and fully interoperable RAN,” said Ravi Sinha, VP Technology and Solution Development at Reliance Jio and co-chair of nGRG.
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