non-RT RIC
Non-Real-Time RIC: O-RAN component hosted in SMO that runs rApps for policy guidance, ML model training, and analytics on >1s timescales via A1.
The non-RT RIC is the slow, thoughtful counterpart to the near-RT one. It lives inside the SMO and runs rApps — software for the jobs that benefit from a wider view and more time: training ML models, working out policies, crunching network-wide analytics, recommending configuration changes. "Non-real-time" here means slower than a second, and in practice that can stretch to minutes or hours for things like a nightly retraining run.
Its main job toward the rest of the RAN is guidance, delivered over the A1 interface to the near-RT RIC: policies, enrichment information (external context the RAN wouldn't otherwise have, like predicted traffic), and trained models that the near-RT RIC then applies on the fast loop. So the two RICs work as a pair — the non-RT RIC figures out what good behaviour looks like over the long run, and the near-RT RIC enforces it moment to moment. That two-tier split is one of the core ideas of the whole RIC architecture.
Frequently asked questions
- How is the non-RT RIC different from the near-RT RIC?
- Timescale and home. The near-RT RIC runs xApps on a ~10 ms-to-1 s loop, talks to the RAN over E2, and handles moment-to-moment optimisation. The non-RT RIC sits in the SMO, runs rApps on timescales longer than a second (up to hours), and handles model training, analytics, and policy. The non-RT RIC sends guidance down to the near-RT RIC over the A1 interface; the near-RT RIC enforces it.
Related terms
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