Towards SMPC-enabled O-RAN: A survey with deployment-oriented insights

The evolution of 6G networks has led to the development of open, intelligent, and decentralized architectures. Nevertheless, protecting data privacy and security across systems with multiple vendors remains a critical challenge. Although Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) and the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) have emerged as promising candidates, existing articles have evaluated their performance in isolation. It implies that their combined impact on system performance has not yet been explored. Consequently, this article presents an integrated, deployment-oriented synthesis that maps lightweight and scalable SMPC protocols to O-RAN components such as the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), xApps, and open interfaces. Particularly, this article identifies four key research challenges: SMPC protocol scalability, architectural integration, secure AI optimization, and multi-vendor data confidentiality. To address these identified challenges, a comprehensive performance evaluation of state-of-the-art SMPC schemes is performed. The evaluation focuses on latency, bandwidth, and computational overhead of SMPC schemes in 6G-enabled O-RAN systems. Thus, by linking SMPC techniques with O-RAN architectures, this article provides practical insights and quantitative evidence to support the development of secure, efficient, and interoperable 6G wireless technologies.