AI And The RAN
The Mobile Network, Thursday, March 14th, 2024
The AI-RAN Alliance launched during MWC. It said that it was aimed at 'integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into cellular technology to further advance radio access network (RAN) technology and mobile networks'.
Nvidia was the lead company in terms of pushing out the announcement. Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung were representing the large RAN vendors. There were two operators - SoftBank and T-Mobile. There were the cloud players AWS and Microsoft. Arm was also present, as was 'AI-native' mobile PHY software provider DeepSig, a company featured before on TMN.
AI in the RAN is far from new. SON (Self Optimising or Self Organising Networks) technology has incorporated elements of Machine Learning for years. RAN vendors incorporate machine learning and analytics into their RAN platforms to provide intelligence and control, and recently O-RAN specifications have disgaggregated such RAN controller technology into two functions that sit above the baseband, the near real time and non real time RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs).