The meeting was held in a hybrid model, where both in-person and remote participants were allowed to join and benefit from the school. The key focus of the school was on Open Ran, which is a recent and vibrant trend in the telecommunications market, especially in the 5G area, aiming at the realization of various challenging objectives. These include at first spot splitting of a base station into several functional components, including a central unit (CU), distributed unit (DU), and a remote unit (RU). Next, they deal with opening interfaces to enable interoperability (especially Open Fronthaul) and disaggregating software from hardware in the RAN domain. Finally, the Open RAN introduces advanced automation into the RAN system by employing an abstracted entity to manage the radio networks, i.e., the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC); it serves as a platform for xApps (optimization applications in the RAN domain) and rApps (optimization applications in the management plane) using AI/ML.
The participants of the school will have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge and experience in various domains of Open RAN during three highly attractive training days. The first day was mainly oriented on the theoretic background related to the Open RAN domain, whereas the second day was more industry-oriented. Finally, on the third day, the hand-on labs have been provided to the attendees. The participants have access to the prerequisites for O-RAN software installation, have been guided in real-time through the arcana of xApp implementation in SD-RAN, and have access to the recordings afterward, so they can easily reproduce the whole lab.
The overall event was highly successful; there were overall 70+ registrations, where 18 of them have been in-persons. Also, many speakers participated in person, which makes the school highly interactive with very strong off-side discussions and connections. Finally, the scores received in the evaluation surveys circulated among the participants are very high, which proves the impact of the school. Such great achievement was reached due to the fantastic engagement of both speakers, local organizers, but also the in-person attendees who actively participated in the event.
As school co-organizers, we would like to thank all the persons involved for their positive attitude and vivid involvement in the event, which made it highly successful. We would also like to thank our event partners, Rimedo Labs, EURACON and COST CA20120 INTERACT, for the support and the opportunity to organize it! Special thanks go to all the speakers for their valuable insights, namely:
Dedicated thanks go also to the local supporters: