Emulation of a Private Network Enabled by SDN in Open RAN

Although in the world the focus is on the Fifth Generation (5G) and other future generations, the industry needs to focus separately on the coverage of the Fourth Generation (4G) first. One of the reasons why the Long-Term Evolution mobile technology will continue to evolve is that, in general, the average user does not need 5G technology because its benefits are not substantial for consumer applications. The number of subscribers for the LTE technology will, therefore, continue to increase. Open RAN is able to deploy both LTE and NR mobile technologies. The deployment of Open Radio Access Networks translates in costs reduction, as well as increasing flexibility, scalability and reliability. The O-RAN Alliance has promised to open a new ecosystem that is centralized on the software and where the hardware becomes a white box. This new software-centered ecosystem allows to obtain systems in which most, or all, of the RAN MAC and PHY layers are implemented via software. Many mobile network operators (MNOs) throughout the world are, therefore, now testing and deploying Open RAN. Moreover, the approaches of Software-Defined Networking (SDN), such as virtualization and vendor neutrality, offer new and efficient ways to manage the mobile network which are extremely relevant for Open RAN. Open RAN, ergo, is part of the transformation in deploying SDN. SDN brings flexibility to Open RANs, allowing MNOs to simply evolve their deployed private LTE network into a private NR network. For all the reasons mentioned so far, the goal of this thesis is to emulate a Private LTE mobile Network. The emulated private network will be deployed in Open Radio Access Network and it will be enabled by Software-Defined Networking.