Optical-wireless cooperative control with optical path switching for traffic steering in Open RAN

We propose an optical-wireless control with optical path switching for traffic steering in an open radio access network (RAN) applying an all-photonic network (APN) offering a user-dedicated optical path. Some of the strict requirements for beyond fifth-generation (5G) and sixth-generation (6G) mobile systems, such as low latency, high reliability, and low power consumption, must be met not only in wireless networks but also across optical and wireless networks in the RAN. We experimentally demonstrate our proposed optical-wireless cooperative control executing optical path switching in coordination with the handover of traffic steering. The results showed that the control loop from collecting and analyzing key performance indicators to controlling the RAN and APN was less than 800 ms, which meets the control loop requirement of less than 1 s defined by the O-RAN Alliance.