O-RAN with Machine Learning in ns-3

The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Alliance is an industry-led standardization effort, with the main objective of evolving the Radio Access Network (RAN) to be open, intelligent, interoperable, and autonomous to support the ever growing need of improved performance and flexibility in mobile networks. This paper introduces an extension to Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) which mimics the behavior and components of the O-RAN Alliance's O-RAN architecture. In this paper, we will describe the O-RAN architecture, our model in ns-3, and a Long Term Evolution (LTE) case study that utilizes Machine Learning (ML) and its integration with ns-3. At the end of this paper, the reader will have a general understanding of O-RAN and the capabilities of our fully simulated contribution so it can be leveraged to design and evaluate O-RAN-based solutions.