Demystifying the Near-real Time RIC: Architecture, Operations, and Benchmarking Insights

Widely expected to serve as a blueprint for the upcoming sixth generation of cellular networks, the Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) architecture is ushering in a new era of programmable control and assurance for the telecommunications industry. Central to Open RAN's themes of softwarization and programmability is the N earreal Time RAN Intelligent Controller (near-RT RIC). Operating on a timescale of greater than 10 IDS, the near-RT RIC is proving indispensable for key use cases relating to traffic engineering, resource optimization, infrastructure sharing, and service assurance. However, despite its critical role, the near-RT RIC is still largely considered a black box, with existing literature providing little to no insight regarding the RIC's internal architecture, operations, and performance. With a view to addressing this gap in the prior art, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the near-RT RIC, detailing both the RIC's architecture as well as delivering scalability-related insights through a detailed set of performance benchmarks. Furthermore, for the first time in the literature, this paper also provides unique operational input regarding the RIC.