# On Deploying the Internet of Energy with 5G Open RAN Technology including Beamforming Mechanism
## 4 Implementation of Beamforming in Open RAN Networks
### Beamforming in Open RAN
It is known that digital beamforming is a good solution for capacity and flexibility in the case of a high-traffic communication environment since it offers steerable beams. Each antenna has a dedicated RF signal and path and provides a high number of beams that can be transmuted dynamically with no change in the hardware. Thus, in this method, the O-RU generates beam weights based on the channel information from O-DU. The algorithms can synthesize a drive signal to obtain the maximum of any beam characteristics. However, implementing the precoding in RU will lead to inter-RU interferences in the O-RU. The zero-forcing algorithm (ZF) is one of the algorithms that can be implanted to overcome this interference issue in received signals. O-RAN specifications have adjusted the front-haul interface by allowing the front-haul interface to carry spatial layers, which means fewer data and reduces the complex timing for O-RU and OCU/O-DU link compared to the 3 GPP specifications. Figure 3 presents the digital beamforming diagram in O-RAN compared to 3 GPP. Figure 3: Digital beamforming block diagram in 3 GPP and O-RAN. The comparison in Figure 3 presents the difference in the implementation of digital beamforming between 3 GPP and O-RAN (Category B), where the precoding has been transferred to O-RU. Therefore, this implementation will gain more reliability due to the low channel load in the data flow from O-DU to O-RU, where the link capacity requirement will be lower by reducing the data bit of scheduling and beamforming commands as its one of the main contents in C-plane data flow between the O-DU and O-RU, as shown in Table 1.  
There are two layers in C-Plane messages: the transport layer and application layer. Each layer includes different sections (there are more than eight sections in C-plane): the transport layer and the eCPRI (enhanced Common Public Radio Interface) header include corresponding entries implemented to indicate the message type. The application layer includes ordered fields for control and synchronization. Furthermore, within the application layer, some sections determine the characteristics of the U-plane. Each section carries specific parameters to O-RU individually. These parameters are managed by the management-Plane (M-Plane) and can specify the packet size of the C-plane based on the handled section from O-DU and O-RU. C-plane section has multibit parameters with different numbers of bits. Some of these parameters define the beamforming method; for example, the weight-based dynamic beamforming method performs the beamforming within O-RU based on parameters carried by the C-plane and transported from O-DU over the front-haul, such as precoding beam weights, which are carried by the BeamID parameter and channel state information. This implementation carries more parameters, leading to a high signal cost due to the high number of bits in the C-plane packet. The channel state information beamforming method, the C-plane packet will carry fewer parameters and reduce the packet size by 40% by abandoning the BeamID parameter and producing precoding beam weights in O-RU based on parameters transported from O-DU such as UE identifier (ueld parameter) and channel state information (ciSample and ciQsample parameters). Additionally, the basic calculation formula that can explain and compare the results of reducing the transferred parameters is the channel capacity in the front-haul by using the celebrated Shannon formula:  
\[C\ =\ B\log\left(1\ +\ \frac{P_{o}}{P_{N}}\right) \tag{1}\]  
where \(B\) is the channel bandwidth of the front-haul interface, \(P_{o}\) is the average signal power, and \(P_{N}\) is the average noise power. Decreasing the transferred parameters leads to fewer resource blocks, which will raise the average output power of the signal. This concept is essential in the channel state  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Plane** & **Name of Messages** & **Contents** & **Periodicity** \\ \hline \multirow{8}{*}{C-Plane} & \multirow{4}{*}{