What is a RAN Intelligent Controller?

A RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) helps operators to optimize and launch new services by allowing them to make the most of network resources. It also helps operators ease network congestion. The RAN intelligent Controller (RIC) is cloud-native, and a central component of an open and virtualized RAN network. See summary of the use cases in the table below.

The RIC provides advanced control functionality, which delivers increased efficiency and better radio resource management. These control functionalities leverage analytics and data-driven approaches including advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI) tools to improve resource management capabilities (see figure).