Delineate responsibilities between nRT RIC and gNB to prevent policy conflicts

Determine a formal division of responsibilities between the Near-Real-Time RAN Intelligent Controller (nRT RIC) and the gNB components (including gNB-DU and gNB-CU), and develop conflict resolution and arbitration policies to prevent inconsistent radio resource management actions when multiple xApps and gNB functions operate concurrently.

Background

The paper highlights that the boundary between RIC-driven control and gNB-native functions is currently ambiguous and varies depending on the deployed xApps and gNB capabilities.

This ambiguity can lead to conflicting actions and network instability, which adversaries could exploit. Establishing a clear division of responsibilities and robust conflict mitigation mechanisms is necessary to ensure reliable and secure operation.

References

The division of responsibilities between the RIC and the gNB is not distinctly defined; it varies with the xApps in use and the functionalities made available by the gNB.

— Intelligent Control in 6G Open RAN: Security Risk or Opportunity?  (2405.08577 - Soltani et al., 2024) in Section 6.1.3 (Conflict and inconsistency in radio access policies)

Ensuring that multiple intelligent controllers can operate together without unpredictable interactions is the open problem---and the motivation for a runtime assurance perspective.

— Assured AI-Native Network Control Loops: State of the Art, Research Challenges and the Missing Runtime Assurance Layer  (2609.11996 - Belter et al., 9 Sep 2026) in Section 2, subsection “Towards AI-Native Network Control Loops”