Open ran radio unit power saving on per-symbol basis using transmission blanking

Abstract

Parsing of C-plane messages is described using transmission blanking, e.g., C-plane messages that are communicated from an open RAN distributed unit (O-DU) to an open RAN radio unit (O-RU) to determine whether a particular symbol that is to be subsequently communicated via U-plane messages is blank (e.g., no physical resource blocks (PRB)) or not blank (e.g., at least one PRB). A bitmap can be constructed by the O-RU having a bit length equal to the number of symbols to be communicated, where each bit of the bitmap corresponds to one of the symbols and indicates whether the corresponding symbol is blank. Such can be determined from counters that can count the number of blank PRBs within a given symbol. During blank symbols, some devices can be powered down to conserve power on a symbol-by-symbol basis in a manner that is compliant with Open RAN specifications and does not presume the same vendor for O-RU and O-DU.