Inquiry about using ns-3 oran with 5G NR

[bcerecetto]

Hello,

My name is Betina, I'm part of a group of undergraduate engineering students from Uruguay. For our final degree project, we plan to use the ns-3 oran module to generate a new LM. We are currently researching 5G NR technology and would like to explore the possibility of using 5G instead of LTE, which is what most of our documentation is currently focused on.

We would like to ask whether there has been any work or exploration related to extending this ns3 oran (near-RT RIC) module to support 5G. If so, we would really appreciate any insights, recommendations or references you could share that might help guide our approach.

Thank you for your time and for maintaining this project.
Best regards,
Betina

[wdgj]

I am pleased to know that you are interested in using our module. As of now we do not have any plans to use our module with the mmWave module that NYU is developing or the NR module that CTTC is developing. However, it should be straightforward to incorporate our module with any of the NR modules, and if you are willing to push this feature upstream we are open to contributions from the community.

In general, if you want to incorporate our module with an NR module you would have to take steps similar to the following. First, you would need to create an OranE2Terminator (similar to the one for LTE here) to make the NR gNB capable of interfacing with the Near-RT RIC. This is essentially all you need to add support for NR. After that you would have to decide on the metrics you want to collect and create the necessary OranReport classes (like what is done here to report UE connection information from the LTE eNB). Then update the SQL data repository to create the SQL tables, add functions to store the report information, and add functions to retrieve the report information by modifying the code here. Then you would have to implement an OranLogicModule (such as the one here) to act as an xApp that retrieves the report information from the data repository, and then create and use commands in that logic module to make changes in the RAN (such as the handover command for LTE here).

Aside from these general steps that would incorporate and make use the ns3-oran module, you will also want to consider what features are currently available in the NR module that you use. This is important because it will impact how much work you will have to put in to extending the current NR module to support whatever features you plan to implement with your new logic module (i.e., the metrics you can collect and the commands/actions you can issue).

[bcerecetto]

Hello,

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation and for the helpful guidance.
I will follow the steps you outlined as a guide for our work.

Our initial goal is to build a basic setup where we can implement a simple monitoring Logic Module.
At this stage, we plan to start experimenting with the NR module and focus on collecting and reporting a small set of basic metrics.

Thank you again for your time and support.

Best regards,
Betina