Etten-Leur, Netherlands, 26^th February ’24 – Future Connections, the independent telco solutions provider and software developer with in-depth experience in network performance assurance, RAN optimisation and automation and in telco managed services, today announced Any-RIC Translator, its innovative approach to accelerating RAN automation App development, enabling developers to write a single version of an App that can then be deployed on any RIC or C-SON platform to automate operations in any RAN multi-vendor ecosystem.

Mobile network operators are adopting the OpenRAN RIC to enable a new generation of C-SON and D-SON Apps for RAN automation and optimisation, even in networks that may not be compliant with O-RAN ALLIANCE specifications. However, while the RIC supports open, standard interfaces for communicating with components in the Open RAN architecture, RIC programming interfaces provided by RIC vendors feature different programming languages, incompatible APIs, various RAN data collection methods and non-standard data types. Such vendor-specific dependencies make it impractical to develop a single version of an rApp or xApp that can be easily ported to any RIC operating in any multi-vendor RAN infrastructure.

Any-RIC Translator overcomes this challenge by presenting an open, vendor-agnostic, programming abstraction layer featuring a single, common API that decouples xApps/rApps and C-SON Apps from platform-specific dependencies, accommodates multiple methods for data collection and normalises how RAN data is represented and encoded, including RAN telemetry, KPIs and configuration parameters.

The current state of affairs could give rise to many single-vendor RIC App stores, each offering xApps/rApps that run on only a single RIC platform and with multiple versions of each App for each RAN ecosystem. This cumbersome scenario would force RAN automation App developers to maintain multiple versions of the same xApp or rApp. By contrast, the adoption of Any-RIC Translator would enable the realisation of a common, vendor-agnostic App store catering to all RAN environments, with developers having to create and maintain just a single version of each App.

“Any-RIC Translator is a win for RAN automation App developers, who can focus on technical innovation and application logic, without getting bogged down in the intricacies of developing and maintaining multiple versions of the same App,” says Alejandro Medina, CTO at Future Connections. “It’s also a win for mobile operators, who can select xApps/rApps and C-SON Apps without having to navigate a maze of vendor dependencies involving many different RIC and C-SON platforms and without having to accommodate for differences in the underlying multi-vendor RAN infrastructure”.