As indicated in thehttps://www.o-ran.org/ pages, “O-RAN ALLIANCE is committed to evolving Radio Access Networks with its core principles being intelligence and openness. It aims to drive the mobile industry towards an ecosystem of innovative, multi-vendor, interoperable, and autonomous RAN, with reduced cost, improved performance and greater agility.“
Work is structured into several Working Groups, where the following groups are those particularly important from a synchronization standardization perspective:
WG4, Open Fronthaul Interface
WG9, Open X-haul Transport
WG4 deals with fronthaul related specification, e.g., as related to the synchronization of the O-RU. Relevant specifications developed by WG4 are:
•Control, User and Synchronization Plane Specification (CUS): ORAN.WG4.CUS.0.v11.00
•Fronthaul Conformance Test Specification (CONF): ORAN.WG4.CONF.0.v07.00
•Fronthaul Interoperability Test Specification (IOT): O-RAN.WG4.IOT.0-v09.00
WG9 deals with the general O-RAN network and transport architectures, including specifications for X-haul timing & synchronization. Relevant synchronization related specifications developed by WG9 are:
•Synchronization Architecture and Solution Specification (XTRP-SYN): ORAN.WG9.XTRP-SYN.0.v03.00
•X-Haul Transport Testing (XTRP-TST): ORAN.WG9.XTRP-TST-v02.00
Updates from the O-RAN activities related to synchronization are summarized in the O-RAN Sync Standards updates page .
O-RAN specifications can be downloaded at this link.