Enabling Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight Drones Operation over Open RAN 5G Networks with Slicing

Among the foretold claims of the transition from 5G to 6G, Beyond-Visual-Line-of-Sight (BVLoS) drone operation has emerged as a prominent Internet-of-Robots enabler. However, safety concerns have been raised since BVLoS imposes strict requirements on performance and dependability on the technology, and requires robust regulatory frameworks. While current 5G technologies promise to meet the performance requirements in terms of throughput and latency, there is a lack of studies regarding how to achieve full reliability in practice. To address this challenge, the research community is actively working on open-source projects that allow for experimental validation in the field. Fortunately, new Open RAN (O-RAN) standards are paving the way for such approaches in an integrated, native manner. In this work, we deploy a state-of-the-art 5G O-RAN open-source BVLoS operational system, report current limitations, and address them via advanced capabilities natively available in O-RAN: Slicing. Our proposed deployment minimizes trajectory errors due to 5G link congestion and keeps latency well below the 3GPP limits defined for BVLoS operation. Finally, we discuss on the challenges ahead and the opportunities that 5G O-RAN-enabled networks may bring to BVLoS drone operation.