SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS, France & BONN, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--ETSI and O-RAN are pleased to announce that ETSI has adopted the first O-RAN specification as ETSI TS 103 859, namely ‘O-RAN Fronthaul Control, User and Synchronization Plane Specification v7.02’. The document focuses on Open Fronthaul, one of interfaces in the O-RAN Architecture for open and intelligent Radio Access Networks. It specifies the control plane, user plane and synchronization plane protocols used over the fronthaul interface linking the O-DU (O-RAN Distributed Unit) and the O-RU (O-RAN Radio Unit) for the lower layer functional splits. The scope of TS 103 859 includes both LTE and NR (5G).

The ETSI Publicly Available Specification (PAS) process enables an ETSI partner to submit one or more of its PAS for adoption by ETSI. It can then become an ETSI Technical Specification (TS) or ETSI Technical Report (TR). The organization asking for this process must be a legal entity, have an IPR policy compatible with ETSI’s or have exceptionally accepted to apply ETSI’s IPR policy, and have signed a Cooperation Agreement.

O-RAN is preparing to submit more of its specifications to the ETSI PAS process to recognize additional parts of the O-RAN Architecture as ETSI specifications.