O-RAN A1 Policies in ONAP Istanbul

Owned by John Keeney (Ericsson EST)
Last updated: Mar 08, 2022
2 min read



Architecture for Istanbul Release:




A1 Policy components (subset of Non-RealTime RIC):

A1 Policy Management Service (In ONAP CCSDK/SDNC)

SDNC A1 Adapter (In ONAP CCSDK/SDNC)

Near-RT RIC / A1 Simulator (in O-RAN Source Community (OSC)) (Wiki)

A1 Policy Management GUI / NONRTRIC Dashboard (in O-RAN Source Community (OSC)) (Wiki)

The Gerrit Repos for code: ONAP CCSDK (O-RAN), with support functions available in OSC repos: OSC A1-Simulator & OSC NONRTRIC Control Panel

ONAP A1 Policy Management Service (“Policy Agent”) (ONAP CCDSK)

The Policy Management Service is a micro service which maintains a transient repository of:

  • All A1 policies instances in the network. Each policy is targeted to a near-RT-RIC instance and is owned by a 'service' (R-APP or the NONRTRIC Dashboard).

  • All near-RT-RICs in the network. This information can be maintained using the ONAP CDS database (which is using the Cloudify Consul database) or using a plain text file.

  • All Policy types supported by each near-RT-RIC

The service provides :

  • Unified REST API for managing A1 Policies in all near-RT-RICs.

  • A DMaaP API for A1 Policy management.

  • Synchronized view of A1 Policy instances for each R-APP

  • Synchronized view of A1 Policy instances in each near-RT-RIC

  • Synchronized view of A1 Policy types supported by each near-RT-RIC

  • Lookup service to find the near-RT-RIC to control resources in the RAN as defined in  O1 (e.g. which near-RT-RIC should be accessed to control a certain CU or DU, which in turn controls a certain cell).

  • Monitors all near-RT-RICs and maintains data consistency  – e.g. recovery from near-RT-RIC restarts

  • Support for different Southbound APIs  to the near-RT-RICs (different versions of the A1-P and other similar APIs).

HTTPS can be configured to use a supplied certificate/private key and to validate peers towards a list of trusted CAs/certs.
There is also support for tunneling HTTP/HTTPS through a HTTP Proxy.

ONAP A1 Adapter (part of ONAP CCSDK/SDNC):

Mediation point for A1 interface termination in SMO/Non-RT RIC

  • Implemented as OSGI Feature/Bundles

  • A1 Rest southbound

  • NETCONF YANG Northbound

  • RESTCONF > NETCONF adapter

  • Mapping logic / Provider

  • Can be included in an any SDNC/CCSDK persona

OSC A1 Policy Management GUI / NONRTRIC Dashboard

Graphical user interface. This tool is available in O-RAN SC and is not essential for the A1 Policies / Non-RT-RIC.

  • View and Manage A1 policies in the RAN (near-RT-RICs)

  • Interacts with the Policy Management Services NBI (REST API)

  • Graphical A1 policy creation/editing is model-driven, based on policy type’s JSON schema

  • Frontend: Angular framework

  • Backend Java Springboot application

  • Please refer to the OSC NONRTRIC Control Panel Documentation (E-Release)

OSC Near-RT RIC Simulator / A1 Simulator:

A1 simulator used for testing purposes. This tool is available in O-RAN SC and is not essential for the A1 Policies / Non-RT-RIC.

  • Used to create multiple stateful A1 providers (simulated near-RT-RICs)

  • Implemented as a Java Springboot application

  • Swagger-based northbound interface, so easy to change the A1 profile exposed

  • Please refer to the OSC A1 Simulator Documentation (E-Release)