IEEE Open RAN Summit

Join ONF's Sarat Puthenpura, Chief Architect - Open Radio Access Networks for his talk on the "ONF SMaRT 5G (Sustainable Mobile and RAN Transformation) Initiative. This is ONF's newest project focused on developing, demonstrating and open sourcing ML-driven, intelligent energy savings solutions for mobile networks. This project is a community collaboration; additional participants are invited to join!

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Abstract: ONF’s SMaRT-5G Project is focused on developing, demonstrating and open sourcing ML (Machine Learning) - driven, intelligent energy savings solutions for mobile networks.

Worldwide mobile network energy costs are conservatively estimated at more than $25B annually, with 70-90% of these costs attributed to the RAN ($17.5B - $22.5B). Assuming a realistic 8% savings were to be achieved as a result of the SMaRT-5G project, annual savings would conservatively translate to $1.4B - 1.8B. But more importantly, operators are under significant pressure to reduce their carbon footprint which accounts for 2 - 3% of total global energy consumption. It is imperative that operators significantly improve their energy efficiency, and SMaRT-5G is designed specifically to help operators and vendors make significant and rapid strides towards a net zero carbon footprint for mobile networks.

The ONF SMaRT-5G initiative will build a series of Proof of Concept (PoC) implementations to demonstrate progressively advanced energy savings techniques on both open source RAN stacks as well as commercial-grade RAN configurations, enabled by ONF’s RAN, RIC, and Application Interoperability Lab (RRAIL). The O-RAN RIC-based architecture is highly suitable to implement RAN energy saving solutions and the PoCs planned for SMaRT-5G are designed to be easily leveraged by operators to help accelerate adoption of O-RAN standards and energy savings solutions. 

Learn more about SMaRT-5G