RAN Intelligent Controller: near-RT RIC and non-RT RIC

Intelligence at the Heart of O-RAN

The RAN Intelligent Controller is O-RAN's most transformative innovation — it adds programmable intelligence to the RAN. There are two types. The near-RT RIC operates with a 10ms to 1-second control loop and hosts xApps, which are third-party microservices making real-time RAN decisions. It connects to O-CU and O-DU via the E2 interface. The non-RT RIC operates with control loops longer than 1 second — typically minutes to hours. Hosted within the SMO framework, it runs rApps for policy-based guidance, ML model training, and long-term optimization.