RAN has incrementally evolved with every generation of mobile telecommunications, thus enabling faster data transfers between user devices and core networks. The amount of data has increased more than ever with an increase in the number of interlinked devices. With existing network architectures, challenges lie in handling increasing workloads with the ability to process, analyse and transfer data faster.   The 5G ecosystem requires virtual implementations of RAN. Fifth-generation mobile networks demand more flexibility to adapt, scalability to meet network conditions on run time, and automation for remote management which could only be delivered through virtualised RAN.  

Intel FlexRAN addresses the challenges of traditional RAN architectures. It has the ability to abstract the underlying hardware from core network functions for optimal resource utilisation. FlexRAN is an enhancement and reference implementation of O-RAN (OpenRAN) with the flexibility of interoperation between different vendors’ equipment. Support for EPA (Enhanced Platform Awareness) features empowers Intel FlexRAN to optimally run on Linux distributions. Canonical’s Ubuntu real-time kernel support and Intel’s FlexRAN both complement each other to enable telcos and mobile operators to scale resources as per needs and benefit from cost-savings.  Watch a detailed webinar here.

Canonical’s Real-time kernel for Intel FlexRAN

Canonical is delivering optimised, secure, and efficient server images for telecommunication workloads and enabling 5G adoption by providing real-time kernel support in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Real-time kernel delivers optimal performance and low latency for network sensitive workloads and security features. It enables thread scheduling by pinning cores to processes. It isolates and dedicates the cores to both host and applications for optimal resource utilisation.

Intel and Canonical contributed efforts to deliver scalable and reliable Intel FlexRAN reference RAN software with Ubuntu real-time kernel and Canonical strictly confined MicroK8s . Strict confinement uses the security features of the Linux kernel, including AppArmor, seccomp, and namespaces to prevent applications and services from accessing the wider system. FlexRAN comprises a control plane and agent API. Agent API separates the control plane from the data plane. Hence, separation provides a cost-efficient and reliable RAN environment.    

Demo: Real-time auto-scaling of vDU in 5G RAN network

Canonical and Intel, jointly performed the auto-scaling of 5G RAN components, i.e vDU, and demonstrated that in MWC, Las Vegas 2022. The test setup comprises Canonical’s MicroK8s cluster enabled with Ubuntu real-time kernel, Intel FlexRAN, and Intel accelerators.

In this demo, RAN components are deployed in microservices architecture on Canonical’s MicroK8s cluster. The example here represents a real life scenario of a stadium with high bandwidth demands for autoscaling resources. Under normal circumstances, 5G entertains requests including file transfers, messages and general communications. Bandwidth utilisation is reasonable with guaranteed SLAs. Contrarily, in case of massive events, 5G needs to serve requests for applications including Virtual Reality (VR), live streaming, online sharing, high-quality streaming that requires higher bandwidths.  

The figure below represents the proposed high level architecture for how  FlexRAN’s components are running on top of Ubuntu with a real-time kernel. Trex traffic generator is deployed in one MicroK8s  cluster, Intel FlexRAN is deployed on another MicroK8s and RAN  Intelligent Controller is deployed on a native Kubernetes cluster. Intel FlexRAN’s microservice governance continuously collects vDU telemetry metrics via O1 agent. Thus, ensuring the SLA with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities under high concurrent and dynamic workloads.

DU functional block comprises two microservices; first DU CP and second DU UP. Microservices enable flexibility to scale DU compared to traditional deployment models. In the figure below, three network slices were deployed hosting two UEs each with different scheduling priorities. Slice 1 – GBR0 with higher priority, slice 2 – GBR1 with medium, and slice 3 – Background UEs with the least priority. A traffic generator is used to increase traffic to a certain threshold.

The DU-UP pod reports cell utilisation metrics to RIC via O1 agent. RIC is a software-defined component providing advanced control functionality with efficient radio resource management using AI/ML capabilities.  When the network load increases above the threshold, SMO sends a signal to the Intel FlexRAN microservice governance pod to horizontally scale out vDU. As a result, slice 1 is migrated to the newly deployed DU-UP pod to ensure SLA and QoS and when the network load decreases, Cell # 2 is deleted.  The runtime monitoring of metrics has also been recorded to ensure intelligent decisions based on the traffic situation.

Watch the full demo recording from MWC Las Vegas, 2022 following a high-traffic scenario in a public event and understand how the user traffic has been shifted from one DU to the newly created DU cell site in real-time and what is the role of RIC in this autoscaling of RAN components.

Contact us.

The world’s largest and most influential telecommunications exhibition event, Mobile World Congress (MWC), is taking place in Barcelona on 26-29 February 2024. Canonical is excited to join this important annual event once again and meet the telecom industry. 

Telecommunications is a key sector for Canonical. We offer solutions for private, public and hybrid/multi cloud environments, with a consistent experience across the entire telecom spectrum, from core clouds to the edge, with a single set of tooling. Built with the same philosophy as Ubuntu – secure, trusted and production-grade open source backed by full operations support – our solutions are fully upstream and integrate the latest technology advancements that telco leaders require to deliver best-in-class services to their customers. 

We are looking forward to meeting you at MWC 2024. Come and speak with our experts to learn how we can help you in your journey to cost-effective, secure and trusted open source telecom solutions for your infrastructure.

Hot topics in telco

To meet today’s customer expectations, telecom operators require flexible, scalable and agile operations across the many service types that make up a modern mobile network.

At this year’s MWC event in Barcelona, Canonical’s team will explain how you can elevate your telecom infrastructure with the latest innovations in cloud-native technologies and modernise your telco clouds with open source. These strategies will empower you to meet and exceed customer expectations with repeatable and reliable deployments.

Automation at scale for telco edge clouds with CNEP

We have been listening to our telco customers to understand their needs in delivering cost-effective modern edge clouds for their infrastructure that they can rely on. Canonical is proud to offer a new holistic solution, Cloud Native Execution Platform (CNEP) to meet these needs precisely at telco edge clouds.

With CNEP, we deliver the ideal software stack for telco edge clouds with automation in place, based on fully upstream and CNCF certified Kubernetes running on bare metal hardware for best performance. It brings all essential open source components together, with the aim of achieving high performance in data processing and delivery, whilst ensuring platform security and efficiency with Ubuntu Pro.

At MWC, our team will explain how operators can achieve scalable and repeatable deployment of edge clouds with CNEP. For Open Radio Access Network (RAN) readiness, CNEP is the ideal RAN platform, bringing all the technology features that cloud-native Open RAN components require. CNEP is also tailored for best performance and security assurance for distributed compute and multi-access edge computing (MEC) applications, enabling businesses to run their telco workloads on 5G edge networks.

Real-time Ubuntu for ultra-reliable and low-latency communications

Canonical has been working with all major silicon hardware vendors, such as Intel, to deliver the highest levels of performance and security to telco networks and applications. 

We have been running advanced engineering programs with the aim of enabling the latest innovations in silicon hardware in telco software infrastructure at a rapid pace, with quick software release cycles. As part of our collaboration with Intel, we have integrated Intel FlexRAN in Ubuntu real-time kernel for telco applications and networking software, which has enabled real-time processing at both operating system and silicon levels.

At this year’s MWC, we will explain how Ubuntu Pro brings real-time data processing capabilities to the telco edge for mission-critical operations and also ensures confidential computing for the most-sensitive telco workloads.

Sustainable telco edge infrastructure with an energy-efficient system stack

Telecom networks will increasingly deploy edge cloud sites in the journey to distributed and flexible cloud-native operations. This requires support for several features across the hardware and software stack to make sure that platforms are energy and cost efficient. From container images to bare metal hardware automation, Canonical’s edge cloud stack is equipped with features that ensure sustainable operations.

In Barcelona, we will explain how our open source software stack can deliver optimal deployments on telco edge clouds and help operators meet their sustainability goals.

Demos

At MWC 2024, you will get the chance to see our technical team demonstrate Canonical’s CNEP solution. This is a great opportunity for all players in the telco ecosystem to see how we meet sector requirements on cloud-native operations at the telco edge with automation. In our demo, the Canonical team will run CNEP on Intel’s 4^th Generation Xeon Scalable Processor, bringing the acceleration capabilities provided by Xeon to large-scale edge network rollout for cost-efficient Open RAN deployments.

CNEP’s open and upstream APIs along with Canonical’s observability stack and telemetry solutions enable machine learning algorithms to assist edge cloud operations. The Canonical team will demonstrate how our AI/ML platform solutions can be used to boost the effectiveness of distributed computing applications running on telco edge clouds. We will show how a multi-cloud data platform can be formed for various data types collected from a telecom network. We will also show ML-based anomaly detection and LLM to summarise and explain collected data from the network. 

Come and meet us at MWC 2024

If you are interested in building your own modern telecom infrastructure and migrating to open source with cost-effective, secure and trusted solutions, Canonical can help you. We provide a full stack for your telecom infrastructure, enabling secure, trusted, flexible, optimised, automated and low-touch operations.

To learn more about our telco solutions, meet us to discuss your telecom needs at MWC Barcelona 2024, and visit our webpage at ubuntu.com/telco.

If you’re unable to find a suitable time, please reach out to Mariam Tawakol <mariam.tawakol@canonical.com> or Jacob Boe <jacob.boe@canonical.com>. Let them know your availability and what you’re interested in, and they will set up a meeting for you.

Further reading

Canonical joins Open Networking Foundation

Fast and reliable telco edge clouds with Intel FlexRAN and Real-time Ubuntu

Bringing automation to telco edge clouds at scale

How telcos are building carrier-grade infrastructure using open source