Comparative E2E Performance Analysis of O-RAN Designs in a 5G Standalone Testbed

The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) paradigm has attracted considerable attention from both academic researchers and industry stakeholders, owing to its capacity to significantly enhance the adaptability and flexibility of cellular network architectures. However, the disaggregation of Generation NodeB (gNB) in O-RAN introduces increased system complexity and potential variability in performance metrics, necessitating empirical evaluation to determine whether its performance can rival or exceed that of conventional monolithic designs. In this study, we developed a standalone (SA) testbed to quantitatively assess the downlink (DL) transmission performance of two O-RAN architectures, implemented on two widely adopted open-source platforms: srsRAN and OAI. To ensure a scientifically robust and comprehensive analysis, we meticulously selected key performance metrics, implemented measures to provide solid statistical results and eliminate residual effects between test iterations. Test results show that the split enhances network flexibility by offloading certain processing tasks to the Distributed Unit (DU), thereby reducing the overall hardware usage burden and potentially improving the computational efficiency and resource allocation in future RAN networks.