Guest Editorial Introduction to the Special Section on Open Radio Access Networks: Architecture, Challenges, Opportunities, and Use Cases in Vehicular Networks

Cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) was introduced to support autonomous driving through 5G and beyond networks. C-V2X leverages cellular network infrastructure to integrate vehicle-to-network, vehicle-to-pedestrian, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and vehicle-to-vehicle communications. It has been suggested that Open RAN can be used to achieve the latency requirements essential to realize C-V2X as it achieves real-time optimization through the use of AI in Near real-time RAN Intelligence Controller (Near-RT RIC). The Open RAN will allow the access to historical traffic data or acquisition of data from vehicles. The data will then be transferred to Near-RT RIC for detecting network anomalies while maintaining reliable communication, which is essential for realizing autonomous driving. Open RAN also supports non-real-time RAN intelligent controller (Non-RT RIC) that allows more complex ML workflows such as policy-based feature extraction and optimization to guide vehicles when real-time acquisition is not available. Open RAN provides support for edge cloud, i.e. Open Cloud that helps to interface the Near-RT RIC with Open RAN central unit's user and control plane. Together, the Open RAN and C-V2X are considered to be the key-enabling technologies for achieving low-latency in autonomous vehicular communication networks. The issue attracted over 100 high-quality submissions from all over the world, among which 12 original contributions were eventually selected for publication. The novelty and key contributions of these articles are summarized as follows.