The Open Radio Access Network (RAN) and its embodiment through the O-RAN
Alliance specifications are poised to revolutionize the telecom ecosystem.
O-RAN promotes virtualized RANs where disaggregated components are connected
via open interfaces and optimized by intelligent controllers. The result is a
new paradigm for the RAN design, deployment, and operations: O-RAN networks can
be built with multi-vendor, interoperable components, and can be
programmatically optimized through a centralized abstraction layer and
data-driven closed-loop control. Therefore, understanding O-RAN, its
architecture, its interfaces, and workflows is key for researchers and
practitioners in the wireless community. In this article, we present the first
detailed tutorial on O-RAN. We also discuss the main research challenges and
review early research results. We provide a deep dive of the O-RAN
specifications, describing its architecture, design principles, and the O-RAN
interfaces. We then describe how the O-RAN RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs)
can be used to effectively control and manage 3GPP-defined RANs. Based on this,
we discuss innovations and challenges of O-RAN networks, including the
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) workflows that the
architecture and interfaces enable, security and standardization issues.
Finally, we review experimental research platforms that can be used to design
and test O-RAN networks, along with recent research results, and we outline
future directions for O-RAN development.

本文首次详细介绍 O-RAN 的架构、设计原则和界面，重点讨论了多厂商、互操作组件和基于中心抽象层的数据驱动闭环控制的 O-RAN 网络的创新和挑战，以及架构和接口所能实现的 AI 和 ML 工作流，并回顾了实验性研究平台和未来发展方向。