QACM: QoS-Aware xApp Conflict Mitigation in Open RAN

The advent of Open Radio Access Network (RAN) has revolutionized the field of RAN by introducing elements of native support of intelligence and openness into the next generation of mobile network infrastructure. Open RAN paves the way for standardized interfaces and enables the integration of network applications from diverse vendors, thereby enhancing network management flexibility. However, control decision conflicts occur when components from different vendors are deployed together. This article provides an overview of various types of conflicts that may occur in Open RAN, with a particular focus on intra-component conflict mitigation among Extended Applications (xApps) in the Near Real Time RAN Intelligent Controller (Near-RT-RIC). A QoS-Aware Conflict Mitigation (QACM) method is proposed that finds the optimal configuration of conflicting parameters while maximizing the number of xApps that have their Quality of Service (QoS) requirements met. We compare the performance of the proposed QACM method with two benchmark methods for priority and non-priority cases. The results indicate that our proposed method is the most effective in maintaining QoS requirements for conflicting xApps.