AI-RAN at a stadium. A stadium beside a campus. Four radio units under the roof face down into the bowl; the red map is the SINR they give the stands.

Layers

Scenario

A stadium beside a campus. Four radio units under the roof face down into the bowl; the red map is the SINR they give the stands.

01/06

n78 3.5 GHz: 3.30–3.80 GHz · λ 84.4 mm · Main 5G capacity layer, massive MIMO · 3GPP TS 38.101-1

Network scenes

AI-RAN at a stadium

Radios on the stadium roof run their baseband on a GPU server at the edge, which also runs the AI that watches the crowd and steers the beams through an xApp loop.

The place: Stadium and campus

In this scene

Roof radio unit

One of four 64-element radio units under the roof edge, aimed down at its own side of the stands; opposite units share a carrier. (O-RAN.WG4.CUS.0, 3GPP TS 38.104)
Scene input: 62 dBm EIRP, 30° downtilt toward its own side of the bowl

Roof radio unit

Roof radio unit

Roof radio unit

AI-RAN server: vRAN and AI on shared GPUs

The O-DU and O-CU run as software on GPU-accelerated servers next to the stadium; between match peaks the same GPUs run inference for the venue. Drawn beside it at seven times scale: one 2U GPU server. (O-RAN.WG6.AAL-GAnP (acceleration abstraction), O-RAN.WG6.CADS, 3GPP TS 38.401)
Hosts: O-DU, O-CU, near-RT RIC, AI inference

Near-RT RIC and the beam xApp

The xApp reads per-beam load and channel reports over E2, predicts where the crowd will be, and sets beam and scheduling policy back over E2 within the 10 ms to 1 s near-RT loop. (O-RAN.WG3.E2SM-KPM, O-RAN.WG3.E2SM-RC, O-RAN.WG3.RICARCH)

Links and interfaces

Fronthaul

Open Fronthaul fibre from the roof to the edge server: the distance is short, the bandwidth is high. (O-RAN.WG4.CUS.0, eCPRI 2.0)

E2 control

Measurements up, control down: the loop that steers the beams. (O-RAN.WG3.E2AP)

Computed for this scenario

Outdoor area at SINR ≥ 10 dB

58 %

Median SINR

11.4 dB

Shannon bound at median, 100 MHz

389 Mbit/s

Cell edge (5th percentile)

1.2 dB · 122 Mbit/s

SSB beams per burst (TS 38.213)

8

User beams steered

3

Array gain, 64 elements

18.1 dB

Beamwidth, azimuth

12.8°

Fronthaul

196 m · 1.0 µs of 100 µs (within)

Fronthaul

279 m · 1.4 µs of 100 µs (within)

Scenarios

Before the match

A few groups in the stands; each roof unit serves them with a beam.

Half-time crowd

The stands fill; the xApp steers a beam to each busy block of seats.

Roof unit down

One roof unit is down; the others carry the bowl from further away.

26 GHz layer

The roof units add 26 GHz carriers: line of sight down into the bowl makes mmWave practical here.

Tour transcript

1. A stadium beside a campus. Four radio units under the roof face down into the bowl; the red map is the SINR they give the stands.
2. A roof radio unit: its lobe is aimed down at the stands.
3. Beside the stadium, the AI-RAN edge: the distributed and central units run on GPU servers, shown at seven times scale.
4. Half-time: the xApp reads the load over E2 and steers a beam to each block of seats.
5. One unit down: the others reach across the bowl and the SINR map shows the cost.
6. At 26 GHz the bowl is all line of sight, so the wide mmWave carriers work.

How the numbers are computed

Coverage uses 3GPP TR 38.901 UMi path loss with line of sight against the stand structure, the TR 38.901 sector pattern at a 30° downtilt, each unit aimed at its own side of the bowl and two 100 MHz carriers reused on opposite sides of the bowl (3.45 and 3.65 GHz), SINR summed over the units that share a carrier. Beams are the array factor of an 8 × 8 panel steered to each served block of seats.