Efficient Resource Management for Secure and Low-Latency O-RAN Communication

Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN) are transforming telecommunications by shifting from centralized to distributed architectures, promoting flexibility, interoperability, and innovation through open interfaces and multi-vendor environments. However, O-RAN's reliance on cloud-based architecture and enhanced observability introduces significant security and resource management challenges. Efficient resource management is crucial for secure and reliable communication in O-RAN, within the resource-constrained environment and heterogeneity of requirements, where multiple User Equipment (UE) and O-RAN Radio Units (O-RUs) coexist. This paper develops a framework to manage these aspects, ensuring each O-RU is associated with UEs based on their communication channel qualities and computational resources, and selecting appropriate encryption algorithms to safeguard data confidentiality, integrity, and authentication. A Multi-objective Optimization Problem (MOP) is formulated to minimize latency and maximize security within resource constraints. Different approaches are proposed to relax the complexity of the problem and achieve near-optimal performance, facilitating tradeoffs between latency, security, and solution complexity. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approaches are close enough to the optimal solution, proving that our approach is both effective and efficient.