This Akraino Blueprint, when completed, will be a complete vBBU (virtualized baseband unit) - vCU and vDU (central and distributed unit) design plan.  The blueprint will include hardware components, Wind River Linux OVP real-time low latency kernel, Airship, Middleware components, and ONAP (open network automation platform) for policy-driven service orchestration and automation.

Considering the diagram below, the primary performance criteria of the platform is round trip latency of SCTP (stream control transmission protocol) messages.  The fundamental operation of the system is that it is a containerized (running on Kubernetes/Docker) application that initiates SCTP connections to eNodeB and gNodeB elements in the RAN (radio access network) and subscribes to what are known as “E2 messages”.  When an gNodeB generates an E2 message it needs a response back within a short timeframe or else the response becomes irrelevant.

Using this blueprint, it should be possible to identify and optimize bottlenecks affecting the total round trip time of the E2 message and response.   Scaling characteristics with respect to how many gNodeB elements can concurrently connect and how many E2 messages per unit time can be handled.