O-RAN is radically shifting how cellular networks are designed, deployed and optimized through network programmability, disaggregation, and virtualization. Specifically, RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs) can orchestrate and optimize the Radio Access Network (RAN) operations, allowing fine-grained control over the network. RICs provide new approaches and solutions for classical use cases such as on-demand traffic steering, anomaly detection, and Quality of Service (QoS) management, with an optimization that can target single User Equipments (UEs), slices, cells, or entire base stations. While this comes with the potential to enable intelligent, programmable RANs, there are still significant challenges to be faced, primarily related to data collection at scale, development and testing of custom control logic for the RICs, and availability of Open RAN simulation and experimental tools for the research and development communities. To address this, we introduce ns-O-RAN, a software integration between a real-world near-real-time RIC and an ns-3 simulated RAN which provides a platform for researchers and telco operators to build, test and integrate xApps. ns-O-RAN extends a popular Open RAN experimental framework (OpenRAN Gym) with simulation capabilities that enable the generation of realistic datasets without the need for experimental infrastructure. We implement it as a new open-source ns-3 module that uses the E2 interface to connect different simulated 5G base stations with the RIC, enabling the exchange of E2 messages and RAN KPMs to be consumed by standard xApps. Furthermore, we test ns-O-RAN with the OSC and OpenRAN Gym RICs, simplifying the onboarding from a test environment to production with real telecom hardware controlled without major reconfigurations required. ns-O-RAN is open source and publicly available, together with quick-start tutorials and documentation.

翻译：O-RAN通过网络可编程性、解耦与虚拟化，从根本上改变了蜂窝网络的设计、部署与优化方式。具体而言，RAN智能控制器（RIC）能够编排与优化无线接入网（RAN）的运行，实现对网络的细粒度控制。RIC为经典用例（如按需流量引导、异常检测及服务质量（QoS）管理）提供了新方法与解决方案，其优化可针对单个用户设备（UE）、切片、小区乃至整个基站。尽管这为实现智能可编程RAN带来了潜力，但仍面临重大挑战，主要涉及大规模数据采集、RIC自定义控制逻辑的开发与测试，以及面向研发社区的开源RAN仿真与实验工具的可获取性。为解决上述问题，我们提出了ns-O-RAN——一个将真实近实时RIC与ns-3仿真RAN相结合的软件集成平台，为研究人员和电信运营商构建、测试及集成xApps提供支持。ns-O-RAN扩展了主流的开源RAN实验框架（OpenRAN Gym），通过仿真能力生成真实数据集，无需依赖实验基础设施。我们将其实现为新的开源ns-3模块，利用E2接口连接不同仿真的5G基站与RIC，实现E2消息及RAN关键性能指标（KPM）的交换，供标准xApps调用。此外，我们使用OSC与OpenRAN Gym RIC对ns-O-RAN进行了测试，简化了从测试环境到生产环境的部署流程，无需重大重新配置即可控制真实电信硬件。ns-O-RAN已开源并公开提供，同时附有快速入门教程和文档。