Open-Source 5G RAN Platforms: A Dual Perspective on Performance and Capabilities

Abstract

Open-source implementations of the fifth generation (5G) Radio Access Network (RAN), such as OpenAirInterface (OAI) and srsRAN, have become increasingly relevant for industry and academic research, rapid prototyping, and low-cost private 5G deployments. The state of the art presents different evaluation scenarios for both platforms; however, these are often limited to individual testbed evaluations, end-to-end studies, or partial comparisons between them. In particular, there is a lack of evaluations considering different Software-Defined Radios (SDRs), RAN configurations, user applications, and numbers of real UEs. To address this gap, this paper presents a comparative evaluation of OAI and srsRAN. The study includes a qualitative assessment of supported features and deployment flexibility, followed by a quantitative performance analysis covering radio resource control setup procedures, compliance with theoretical data rates, and real application workloads with diverse quality of service requirements. Specifically, we consider Video on Demand (VoD) for data rate evaluation, Live Streaming (LS) and Cloud Gaming (CG) as latency-sensitive applications. These workloads provide a comprehensive view of each platform capability.