MANATEE: A DevOps Platform for xApp Lifecycle Management and Testing in Open RAN
Sofia Montebugnoli, Leonardo Bonati, Andrea Sabbioni, Luca Foschini, Paolo Bellavista, Salvatore D'Oro, Michele Polese, Tommaso Melodia

TL;DR
MANATEE is a novel DevOps platform that streamlines the deployment, testing, and management of xApps in Open RAN environments, enhancing flexibility, resilience, and observability in 5G networks.
Contribution
It introduces MANATEE, the first platform integrating CI/CD, service mesh, and advanced traffic management for xApp lifecycle automation in Open RAN.
Findings
Service mesh integration adds less than 1 ms latency.
Enables reliable canary deployments and A/B testing.
Facilitates testing across multiple environments.
Abstract
The shift to disaggregated 5G architectures introduces unprecedented flexibility but also significant complexity in Beyond 5G Radio Access Networks (RANs). Open RAN enables programmability through xApps, yet deploying and validating these applications is critical given the nature of the systems they aim to control. Current Open RAN ecosystems lack robust lifecycle management of xApps that enable automated testing, seamless migration, and production-grade observability, resulting in slow, error-prone xApp delivery. To address these issues, DevOps practices can streamline the xApp lifecycle by integrating Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines with advanced traffic management and monitoring, such as leveraging service mesh technologies to enable progressive deployment strategies (e.g., canary releases and A/B testing) to ensure fine-grained observability and…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSoftware-Defined Networks and 5G · Advanced MIMO Systems Optimization · Wireless Networks and Protocols
