D5.1 – Use Case Identification and Demonstration Plan
Creators: name: Salvat Lozano, Josep Xavier
name: Ayala-Romero, Jose A.
name: Castellanos, German
name: Berozashvili, Revaz
name: Pryor, Simon
name: Sark, Vladica
name: Cvetkovski, Darko
name: Gutiérrez Terán, Jesús
name: Bielsa, Guillermo
name: Catalan, Miguel
name: Municio, Esteban
name: Armstrong, Joss
name: O'Meara, Jimmy
name: McNamara, Joseph
name: Koffman, Israel
name: Globen, Baruch
name: Mackenzie, Richard
name: Eger, Ory
name: Umbert Juliana, Anna
name: Ghoraishi, Mir
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023

description: The primary aim of BeGREEN D5.1 is to provide the guidelines for project’s proof-of-concept (PoC) that will demonstrate project innovations. This document provides the scope and description of these PoCs and related activities that will be performed in Work Package 5 (WP5). The outline of the integrations, final demonstration plans, and detailed project plan for each PoC will be provided in BeGREEN D5.2. 

The document starts with reviewing BeGREEN architecture introduced in BeGREEN D2.1, and mapping each PoC to the use cases defined in BeGREEN D2.1 [1]. BeGREEN architecture is proposed based on O-RAN architecture with the introduction of new features to serve BeGREEN innovations, and BeGREEN PoCs are setup alighned with BeGREEN architecture. The document also provides details of testbeds that will be used for PoCs, and the description of BT laboratories testbed is Adastral Park that will be used for final demonstration. 

BeGREEN PoCs described in this document are as follows: 

·       PoC1: BeGREEN Intelligent Plane; that is one of the main components of the BeGREEN architecture. Its main functionality is to expose AI/ML functions to rApps and xApps, enabling the creation of intelligent closed-loop automation empowered by AI/ML, aiming atimproving energy efficiency. Its features will be tested by including it in different PoCs, and at least one AI/ML-based rApp/xApp targeting energy efficiency at the RAN will be showcased. 

·       PoC2: Sensing assisted communications using RIS; The sensing-assisted communications PoC aims to demonstrate how user cell positioning data coming from sensing services can be used for energy savings in future mobile networks. The main idea of the demo is to dynamically change the reflection properties of a RIS depending on the sensed user location.

·       PoC3: Energy efficient CU and O-RAN RIC; This PoC will provide an alternative implementation (acceleration) of CU and O-RAN RIC based on ARM architecture to demonstrate enhanced performance and reduce energy consumption in these components. 

·       PoC4: Energy-efficient DU implementation using hardware acceleration; This PoC is on implementation of DU high-PHY algorithms, using hadware acceleration techniques, to reduce power consumption compared to legacy implementation. Specific targets are Low Density Parity Check codes (LDPC) decoder and Sphere Decoder. 

·       PoC5: RU power amplifier blanking; This PoC is on a RU power consumption optimisation technique called “power amplifier (PA) blanking”. The PA blanking algorithm reduces the RU power consumption by turning off (blanking) the RF PA, which is the highest power-hungry component in the RU (especially in high power RUs > 1 Watt) at times when there is no data to be transmitted by the RU. 

Chapter 4 of this document is dedicated to details of the PoCs, including descriptions, associated use cases (reference to use cases defined in BeGREEN D2.1), and a high-level plan for each PoC implementation. In addition, a short description of the BeGREEN final demonstrations in Adastral Park, by identifying PoCs that are going to be integrated into this testbed are provided. Finally, the outline of the KPIs that each PoC will cover, and the associated measurements are provided in Chapter 5. 

 The key contributions and the associated outcomes of this deliverable are the following:

·       PoC desriptions (including testbed descriptions) and high-level implementation plans; 

·       PoC mapping to reference use cases introduced in BeGREEN D2.1, and associated requirements;

PoC mapping to the project Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).