Supporting 6G Mission-Critical Services on O-RAN

In the era of 6G, cellular networks will no longer be locked into a small set of equipment manufacturers; instead, cellular networks will be disaggregated and support open interfaces. Thus, there is an inherent need for networking functions to be softwarized and virtualized so that customers can apply different vendors' solutions. 6G mission-critical networks must be dependable and secure, ultra-reliable and low latency, and support high connectivity, all while being flexible enough to support custom user deployments. 6G will integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the network architecture to meet the diverse user requirements of 3 ^rd party solutions. A possible 6G candidate capable of supporting the requirements above is Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN). O-RAN enables multiple levels of AI-based control for RAN Intelligent Controllers (RICs). RICs facilitate real-time sensing, reaction, policy determination, and management of radio resources. When coupled with Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), O-RAN enables customized per-device AI service chains that can address the needs of dynamic, diverse 6G networks in real-time. This article presents an O-RAN architecture that supports split-plane multi-component cooperative AI models that utilize multiple RIC-centric and MEC-centric control loops. Through multiple example applications and O-RAN testbeds, we demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed architecture and how it can address the multitude of 6G requirements as necessitated for mission-critical Internet of Things applications.