OCUDU Ecosystem Developer Summit: Full Schedule

October 20-22 | Alexandria, Virgina
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IMPORTANT NOTE: Timing of sessions and room locations are subject to change.

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8:00am EDT

Registration & Badge Pick-Up

Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:00am - 12:30pm EDT

Foyer

Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:00am - 12:30pm EDT
Foyer

Meals / Breaks / Special Events

8:45am EDT

Keynote: Opening Remarks

Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:45am - 8:50am EDT

Boeing Auditorium

Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:45am - 8:50am EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Keynote Sessions

8:50am EDT

Keynote Sessions to be Announced

Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:50am - 10:10am EDT

Boeing Auditorium

Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:50am - 10:10am EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Keynote Sessions

10:10am EDT

Demo Presentations

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:10am - 10:40am EDT

- Scaling OCUDU Deployment and Orchestration With O-RAN Based O-Cloud Best Practices - Chris Wheeler, Red Hat & Nils Fürste, SRS
- 5G LAB KIT: Using OCUDU for Training and Education - Tiago Alves, Allbesmart, Lda
- AI-Native RAN With OCUDU: An Open Research Testbed - Vipin Rathi, Ramanujan College, University of Delhi & Kriish Sharma, Ramanujan College
- AI-RAN DApps for OCUDU: What Runs Today and What's Still To Be Decided - Matt Pennybacker, DeepSig, Inc. & Tim O'Shea, DeepSig
- At-Scale, Real-World Physical AI for Precision Agriculture Using OCUDU and ARA - Taimoor Islam, Iowa State University
- Coordinated ISAC for UAV Detection on an OCUDU-Based Testbed - Chen Chen & Xuan Chen, George Mason University
- Dynamic Spectrum Sharing With an OCUDU-Based Open 5G RAN - Zachary Smith & Dominic Catena, ANDRO Computational Solutions; Stephanie Demers & Alex Lackpour, Peraton Labs
- Enabling DApps for OCUDU With the E3 Interface - Ravis Shirkhani, Northeastern University - Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI); Angelo Feraudo & Michele Polese, Northeastern University; Hai Cheng, zTouch Networks
- Knowing What Regressed: Run Comparison for the OCUDU Test Report - Craig Brennan, Ericsson Software Technology & John Keeney, Ericsson Software Technology
- Live Demonstration: OCUDU on Military-Grade Equipment - Caleb McKinney, Lockheed Martin
- MCP Enabled RAN Security Testing With RAN Tester UE - Charles Ueltschey, Mississippi State University
- RAN-Aware AI Task Offloading To MEC With WebAssembly and OCUDU - Alireza Ebrahimi Dorcheh, UniPhy Technologies / Clemson University & Fatemeh Afghah, Clemson University
- Real-Time Multi-Cell Channel Emulation for OCUDU-Based 5G Testbeds - Simeon Wuthier, National Institute of Standards and Technology & Fernando Cintron, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST
- Real-Time Sensing-Privacy Control for OCUDU at the PHY Layer - Xuan Chen, George Mason University
- Slice on Demand: Enabling Automated End-to-End Network Slicing as a Service in OCUDU - Rafael Lawisch, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - Unisinos
- Time Sensitive Network Integration for OCUDU - Thanh Long Le, Singapore University of Technology and Design & Nguyen Thanh Tam, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)
- XFormer Assisted Multi-Site Scheduling With Inter-cell Coordination - Abdullah AL Safi, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Virginia Tech and Softbank
- Hardening OCUDU With Automated O-RAN Security Testing - Wilfred Luiz, VIAVI Solutions
- EdgeRIC for Real-time AI-Driven Optimization and Control Over OCUDU - Srinivas Shakkottai, Texas A&M University ; Ushasi Ghosh, University of Califronia, San Diego; Woo-Hyun Ko, Bush Combat Development Complex, Texas A&M University System Offices
- Developing Trajectory-Aware Handover With OCUDU on POWDER: A Wireless Research Use Case Demo - Dustin Maas, University of Utah

Speakers

John Keeney

Dr, Ericsson Software Technology

I am a software engineer, researcher and team leader at Ericsson Software Technology (EST) in Ireland.
I focus on open-source software development in the Telecom Network Management domain - specializing in development for Open-RAN.

Vipin Rathi

Assistant Professor, Ramanujan College, University of Delhi

Vipin Rathi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delhi. He was Vice-Chair and Individual Board of Directors at OpenInfra Foundation. He is the Chairperson of Linux Foundation Hyperledger Telecom SIG. He is Vice President of the Emerging Open Tech Foundation. He is the organizer... Read More →

Michele Polese

INSI Technical Director, Northeastern University

Michele Polese is a Research Assistant Professor at Northeastern University and the Technical Director of the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems at Northeastern. He is also the chair for the AI-and-RAN working group of the AI-RAN Alliance and a co-founder at zTouch Networks... Read More →

Abdullah AL Safi

Mr, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Virginia Tech and Softbank

Abdullah Al Safi is a Ph.D. student in ECE at Virginia Tech, with research interest in next-generation wireless communication systems. He earned his MS in ECE from Texas State University, where his thesis focused on dynamic Target Wake Time scheduling for improving energy efficiency... Read More →

Alireza Ebrahimi Dorcheh

PhD Student, UniPhy Technologies / Clemson University

I'm a PhD researcher in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University’s IS-WIN Lab. My research focuses on AI-RAN, O-RAN, and experimental 5G/6G systems, with an emphasis on intelligent RAN control, edge computing, and AI task offloading. I work hands-on with open-source... Read More →

Angelo Feraudo

PhD, Northeastern University

Angelo Feraudo is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI) at Northeastern University, Boston. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Bologna in April 2025, and continued there as a postdoctoral researcher until November 2025... Read More →

Caleb McKinney

Advanced Comms Integration Engineer, Lockheed Martin

Caleb McKinney is a Senior Integration Engineer within Lockheed Martin's eTech Advanced Communications department, where he specializes in next-generation tactical communications systems. His work focuses on deploying 5G software stacks and Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) radios on... Read More →

Charles Ueltschey

Graduate Research Assistant, Mississippi State University

Charles Ueltschey is a Graduate Research Assistant working with Dr. Vuk Marojevic at Mississippi State University. He has continued his multi-year work with the lab from his undergraduate research. His work focuses on improving efficiency, ease of use and reproducibility of 5G protocol... Read More →

Chen Chen

PhD Student, George Mason University

Chen Chen is a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University. His research focuses on O-RAN interoperability testing, open-source 5G testbeds, and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), with an emphasis on experimental implementation and validation... Read More →

Chris Wheeler

Principal Systems Engineer, Telco Emerging Communities Engineering, Red Hat

Hailing from Seattle, I am passionate about Linux, open source, and all things cloudy.

Craig Brennan

Craig Brennan, Ericsson Software Technology

An open source Software Engineer working for Ericsson Software Technology based out of Athlone, Ireland working in the Open-RAN space.

Dominic Catena

Associate Scientist/Engineer, ANDRO Computational Solutions

Dominic Catena is an Associate Scientist at ANDRO Computational Solutions, where he develops and integrates open 5G RAN and dynamic spectrum sharing technologies. He earned a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Pure and Applied Mathematics from Stevens Institute of Technology... Read More →

Dustin Maas

Senior Researcher, University of Utah

Dustin Maas is a senior researcher in the Flux Research Group at University of Utah, where he works on a variety of problems related to wireless networks, including physical-layer security, spectrum sharing, O-RAN, 5G/NextG, and systems design.

Fatemeh Afghah

McQueen Quattlebaum Dean's Professor, Clemson University

Fatemeh Afghah is McQueen Quattlebaum Dean’s Professor in the Department of ECE at Clemson University. She also holds a joint appointment at Savannah River National Laboratory.
She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the N²Women Star in Computer Networking and Communications (2025), 100 Brilliant and Inspiring Women in 6G™ List for 2026, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2019), the NSF CAREER Award (2020), and Best Paper Awards at IEEE Asilomar... Read More →

Fernando Cintron

Research Scientist, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Fernando J. Cintron is a NIST researcher specializing in the simulation and hardware deployment of 5G NR and next-generation wireless systems. He actively leads the development of NIST’s Open RAN testbeds, driving empirical validation of disaggregated architectures, closed-loop... Read More →

Hai Cheng

AI-RAN Software Engineer, zTouch Networks, zTouch Networks

Hai received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineer from Northeastern University in 2025. His research focus on Open RAN, NextG cellular networks, and AI/ML for wireless optimization. He is serving as an AI-RAN software engineer at zTouch Networks.

Matt Pennybacker

OCUDU Technical Lead, DeepSig, Inc.

Matt Pennybacker is the technical lead for OCUDU at DeepSig, where he guides development of AI-RAN algorithms and interfaces in the PHY and MAC, and has helped launch the HWACCEL and AI-RAN working groups. Before that, he was the principal engineer for DeepSig's OmniSIG software... Read More →

Nguyen Thanh Tam

Research Engineer, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)

Research Engineer at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). His work focuses on OCUDU integration, OCUDU deployment, O-RAN testing, and field validation of 5G systems. He has been actively involved in integrating OCUDU with commercial O-RUs, O-RAN SMO, Non-RT RIC... Read More →

Rafael Lawisch

Graduate Researcher, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - Unisinos

Rafael Lawisch is a software engineer and graduate researcher pursuing an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering at Unisinos. His research focuses on 5G Open RAN, network slicing, and automation, with practical work on OCUDU and O-RAN architectures. He has over a decade of experience in... Read More →

Ravis Shirkhani

Ph.D. Candidate, Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems, Northeastern University, Northeastern university - Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI)

Ravis Shirkhani is a Ph.D. candidate at Northeastern University's Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems, advised by Prof. Tommaso Melodia. Her research focuses on 5G and next-generation cellular networks, with an emphasis on Open RAN. Her work spans automated testing and analysis... Read More →

Simeon Wuthier

Postdoctoral Research Associate, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Simeon Wuthier, Ph.D., is a computer science postdoc at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), where his work focuses on 5G/6G networks, O-RAN systems, and post-quantum cryptography. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where he... Read More →

Srinivas Shakkottai

Professor, Texas A&M University

Srinivas Shakkottai is the Debbie and Dennis Segers ’75 Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, with a courtesy appointment in Computer Science and Engineering. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and was a postdoctoral... Read More →

Srinivas Sriram

Senior Manager, VALOR Lab, Viavi Solutions

Srinivas Sriram has spent over two decades in RF and wireless engineering — from RF design through technical lead and solutions architect roles at companies including Meta and CableLabs, and now Senior Manager at VIAVI's VALOR Lab. There he leads independent test and evaluation... Read More →

Taimoor Islam

Research Assistant Professor, Iowa State University

Taimoor Ul Islam is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a senior member of the Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation (WiCI) at Iowa State University, where he also earned his Ph.D. Before joining WiCI, he spent six... Read More →

Thanh Long Le

PhD Student, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Le Thanh Long is a PhD student at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, working on 5G/6G radio access networks, and network optimization. Prior to his PhD, he worked as a Network Engineer at SUTD's Future Communications Connectivity Lab, where he developed and integrated... Read More →

Tiago Alves

CTO, Allbesmart, Lda

Tiago Alves is CTO of Allbesmart, a Portuguese company building open-source 5G/6G platforms. He leads the development of open-source 5G network-in-a-box solutions used by universities, research labs, and industry for private 5G deployments, AI-RAN experimentation, and ISAC research... Read More →

Tim O'Shea

CTO, DeepSig

Dr. Tim O'Shea is the CTO at DeepSig Inc where he is leading AI-RAN and Wireless Machine Learning efforts including software R&D. He is an IEEE Fellow and also leading efforts with AI-RAN for OCUDU, AI-RAN Alliance, FCC-TAC, 3GPP RAN1, and IEEE MLC ETI.

Wilfred Luiz

Staff Security Engineer, Security SME, VIAVI Solutions

Wilfred Luiz is a Staff Security Engineer at VIAVI Solutions focused on 5G and Open RAN security, standards-based validation, and security automation. His work includes O-RAN security testing, cloud-native telecom environments, vulnerability management, and building repeatable automated... Read More →

Woo-Hyun Ko

Senior Research Engineer, Bush Combat Development Complex, Texas A&M University System Offices

Woo-Hyun Ko received the B.S. degree in electrical electronics engineering from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea in 2005 and the M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul Korea in 2007. He earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at... Read More →

Xuan Chen

Ph.D Student, George Mason University

Xuan Chen is a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University, working in the Wireless Cyber Center under Prof. Kai Zeng. Her research focuses on wireless security and privacy, integrated sensing and communication, and software-defined radio prototy... Read More →

Zachary Smith

Associate Scientist/Engineer, ANDRO Computational Solutions

Zachary Smith is an associate Scientist/Engineer at ANDRO Computational Solutions working on 5G RAN. He graduated with a M.S. in Computer Science from SUNY Polytechnic Institute and a B.E. in Computer Engineering from SUNY Stony Brook.

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:10am - 10:40am EDT

Demo Presentations

10:10am EDT

Coffee Break

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:10am - 10:40am EDT

Foyer

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:10am - 10:40am EDT
Foyer

Meals / Breaks / Special Events

10:40am EDT

Evolving the OCUDU Retina Framework for End-to-End, Multi-Vendor Integration Testing - Justin Choquette, UNH Interoperability Labs & Tom Nadeau, WindRiver

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:40am - 11:10am EDT

Boeing Auditorium

As the OCUDU ecosystem matures, validating Open RAN performance requires shifting from isolated component testing to verifying end-to-end interoperability. The current Retina testing framework is limited by tight coupling to internal processes, restricting its ability to orchestrate external components like diverse 5G Core implementations and O-RU hardware.
This presentation, a collaborative effort between the UNH Interoperability Labs (UNH-IOL) and Wind River, proposes a strategic roadmap to evolve the Retina framework. We outline an architectural shift toward a modular, "building-block" approach where deployment of RAN components, Core networks, and physical radio units is decoupled from the test automation harness. By leveraging Ansible-driven orchestration to manage diverse deployment stacks, this extension enables vendor-neutral integration testing and allows common test scenarios to be shared between component and end-to-end testing. The session will review completed framework changes and our road map, while seeking community feedback to ensure the framework supports diverse infrastructures and open-source projects.

Speakers

Tom Nadeau

Chief Archiect Solutions, WindRiver

Tom is Chief Architect of Solutions and leads the Americas Presles Solutions organization, where he and his team help delight our customers with presales architecture and solutions.

Tom was most recently The Chief Technology Officer and Fellow at Spirent. There he worked across Spirent’s products including new and emerging technologies and products. Prior to Spirent, Tom directed the Networking and Telco Solutions teams at Redhat... Read More →

Justin Choquette

Wednesday October 21, 2026 10:40am - 11:10am EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

11:10am EDT

Benchmarking and Validating O-RUs on OCUDU: Lessons From a Vendor-Neutral APAC Validation Lab - Chi Yung (Jeff) Liu, Industrial Technology Research Institute, ITRI

Wednesday October 21, 2026 11:10am - 11:40am EDT

Boeing Auditorium

As OCUDU matures into a carrier-grade open-source 5G stack, operators and integrators need vendor-neutral, reproducible evidence of how O-RU hardware behaves in a real OCUDU deployment—not just vendor-reported claims.

ITRI Lab, an OCUDU Lab partner in the APAC region, is building a neutral validation platform that benchmarks multiple RU architectures on OCUDU, using a methodology covering Open Fronthaul interoperability, throughput/latency KPIs, multi-UE scenarios, and long-duration testing—referenced where applicable against TIP baseline configurations.

This session covers the platform and methodology, selected multi-vendor observations, and a deep-dive validation case: an 8T8R Category B O-RU from LIONS Technology integrated with OCUDU, including Open Fronthaul behavior and beamforming performance. This APAC lab also validates contributions from Taiwan's broader Open RAN ecosystem—LIONS extending into CBRS-compliant PAL/GAA deployments, and G-Reigns on CU/DU integration—into OCUDU, with further cases to follow.

Attendees leave with a reusable framework for OCUDU RU validation, a reference against common baselines, and concrete multi-vendor benchmark results on OCUDU.

Speakers

Chi Yung (Jeff) Liu

Acting Deputy Manager, Industrial Technology Research Institute, ITRI

Jeff Liu leads ITRI Lab, an OCUDU Lab partner in the APAC region. With 17+ years of telecom and network engineering experience, he drives Open RAN and OCUDU ecosystem adoption across the region, leading multi-vendor RU validation, Open Fronthaul benchmarking, and integration work... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 11:10am - 11:40am EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

11:40am EDT

Hardening OCUDU: A Test-Fix-Retest Model for Open O-RAN Compliance - Srinivas Sriram, Viavi Solutions

Wednesday October 21, 2026 11:40am - 12:10pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

Problem: Open-source O-RAN software wants to become carrier-grade, but there's no agreed way to prove it got there. Coverage gets claimed, not verified. Scanners can under-rate severity. Code that works in simulation can fail against real hardware.

Solution: We play two roles: independent evaluator and remediation partner. We test and report what we find, then help fix it with the builders, and retest before calling anything resolved.

How It Works: Every test traces to a spec requirement. Coverage is tagged honestly, verified vs. not observable, not rounded up to "tested." Scanner severity is rechecked and escalated, never downgraded. Testing runs on real hardware, not simulation. Fixes get rerun and reverified.

Current Status: Over a hundred executions since early this year across functional, security, and fronthaul testing. Coverage accountability moved from two-thirds to nearly all of it. Our latest security run found real failures, published as-is, remediation underway.

Next Steps: This test bed isn't tied to one program. Once these gaps close, it extends to other open O-RAN components, deeper fronthaul coverage, and eventually 6G, a model the community can reuse.

Speakers

Srinivas Sriram

Senior Manager, VALOR Lab, Viavi Solutions

Wednesday October 21, 2026 11:40am - 12:10pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

12:10pm EDT

Lunch (Provided Onsite for Registered Attendees)

Wednesday October 21, 2026 12:10pm - 1:10pm EDT

Foyer

Wednesday October 21, 2026 12:10pm - 1:10pm EDT
Foyer

Meals / Breaks / Special Events

1:00pm EDT

Demo Presentations

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT

Speakers

Fatemeh Afghah

McQueen Quattlebaum Dean's Professor, Clemson University

Tiago Alves

CTO, Allbesmart, Lda

Craig Brennan

Craig Brennan, Ericsson Software Technology

An open source Software Engineer working for Ericsson Software Technology based out of Athlone, Ireland working in the Open-RAN space.

Dominic Catena

Associate Scientist/Engineer, ANDRO Computational Solutions

Chen Chen

PhD Student, George Mason University

Xuan Chen

Ph.D Student, George Mason University

Hai Cheng

AI-RAN Software Engineer, zTouch Networks, zTouch Networks

Fernando Cintron

Research Scientist, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Alireza Ebrahimi Dorcheh

PhD Student, UniPhy Technologies / Clemson University

Angelo Feraudo

PhD, Northeastern University

Taimoor Islam

Research Assistant Professor, Iowa State University

John Keeney

Dr, Ericsson Software Technology

Woo-Hyun Ko

Senior Research Engineer, Bush Combat Development Complex, Texas A&M University System Offices

Rafael Lawisch

Graduate Researcher, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - Unisinos

Thanh Long Le

PhD Student, Singapore University of Technology and Design

Wilfred Luiz

Staff Security Engineer, Security SME, VIAVI Solutions

Dustin Maas

Senior Researcher, University of Utah

Caleb McKinney

Advanced Comms Integration Engineer, Lockheed Martin

Tim O'Shea

CTO, DeepSig

Matt Pennybacker

OCUDU Technical Lead, DeepSig, Inc.

Michele Polese

INSI Technical Director, Northeastern University

Vipin Rathi

Assistant Professor, Ramanujan College, University of Delhi

Abdullah AL Safi

Mr, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Virginia Tech and Softbank

Srinivas Shakkottai

Professor, Texas A&M University

Ravis Shirkhani

Ph.D. Candidate, Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems, Northeastern University, Northeastern university - Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI)

Zachary Smith

Associate Scientist/Engineer, ANDRO Computational Solutions

Srinivas Sriram

Senior Manager, VALOR Lab, Viavi Solutions

Nguyen Thanh Tam

Research Engineer, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)

Charles Ueltschey

Graduate Research Assistant, Mississippi State University

Chris Wheeler

Principal Systems Engineer, Telco Emerging Communities Engineering, Red Hat

Hailing from Seattle, I am passionate about Linux, open source, and all things cloudy.

Simeon Wuthier

Postdoctoral Research Associate, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT

Demo Presentations

1:10pm EDT

Validation of Multiple Commercial ORU; Nuances and Opportunities With OCUDU Configurations - Linqi Xiao & Moojan Kamalzadeh, The University of Texas at Dallas

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:10pm - 1:40pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

A commercial O-RU leaves the factory unreachable, and the step that carries it to a first management session is not published. The OCUDU ecosystem already ships lab-grade pieces of that step, a Kea DHCPv4 service encoding Option 43 and an O1 adapter that accepts SSH call-home. Dorado will present what commercial multi-vendor hardware still takes: DHCPv6 with Option 17 for v6-only radios, CMPv2 enrollment with TLS call-home on top, one vendor profile per device, and G.8275.1 timing inside the chain.

Results cover connecting multiple commercial O-RUs to a complete end-to-end OCUDU in a captive environment. A minimum of three commercial O-RUs reach stable call-home with no human step after cabling, with executable O-RAN M-Plane conformance and security cases in Robot Framework as the CT stage. Work is ongoing and additional results may be discussed.

Speakers

Linqi Xiao

PhD Candidate, the University of Texas at Dallas

Linqi Xiao is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas, in Prof. Andrea Fumagalli's OpNeAR Lab, which operates an accredited O-RAN Open Testing and Integration Centre. He works on M-Plane conformance and security testing of commercial O-RUs, Near-RT RIC xApps, and multi-vendor... Read More →

Moojan Kamalzadeh

Ph.D. Candidate, The University of Texas at Dallas

Moojan Kamalzadeh is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas and a researcher in the OpenLab. Her research focuses on Open RAN, software-defined optical networking, cloud-native 5G systems, and performance characterization of virtualized RAN... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:10pm - 1:40pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

1:40pm EDT

From Lab To Field: Integrating OCUDU With Multi-Vendor O-RUs for Outdoor 5G Drone Deployments - Nguyen Thanh Tam, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

OCUDU is emerging as a key open-source foundation for carrier-grade, research-oriented 5G. While most demos remain lab-based, real-world field trials are critical for understanding operational and interoperability challenges.
We present SUTD's OCUDU deployment journey, from multi-vendor O-RU interoperability testing (e.g., Sera Network, Metanoia-based, Compal, QCT, Pegatron) to a fully operational outdoor Open RAN system supporting 5G-connected drone communications.
Next, we share performance results from an outdoor Pegatron O-RU deployment at SUTD Drone Arena, using real-time drone connectivity tests to evaluate mobility, coverage, throughput, and robustness outdoors—a realistic assessment beyond controlled labs.
Finally, we demonstrate OCUDU's integration with the NeuroRAN's SMO/Non-RT RIC and Near-RT RIC via standardized O1/E2 interfaces. This enables AI-driven closed-loop optimization apps, including an Energy-Saving rApp and end-to-end Network-Slicing solution including Slice Resource Management-rApp and Network Slicing xApp.
We close with lessons learned, interoperability challenges, OCUDU roadmap recommendations, and opportunities to accelerate AI-native Open RAN adoption.

Speakers

Nguyen Thanh Tam

Research Engineer, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)

Wednesday October 21, 2026 1:40pm - 2:10pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

2:10pm EDT

How Cohere Made OCUDU Deployment Ready for Achieving Spectral Efficiency - Prem Gopannan, Cohere Technologies

Wednesday October 21, 2026 2:10pm - 2:40pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

Cohere’s Universal Spectrum Multiplier (USM) product is designed as an adjunct to a gNB that performs channel analysis and codebook-free MU-MIMO scheduling based on continuous calibration of the transmission chain and measuring the geometric reciprocity of the channel itself. The USM connects to gNB via gRPC wrapping the E2SM-LLC API. We’ll start the session with an introduction to how the architectural building blocks of the USM, gRPC/API, and gNB function together to add spectral capacity. We will also be talking about how Cohere enabled MU-MIMO support in OCUDU stack.

Speakers

Prem Gopannan

Vice President of Product Architecture and Software Engineering, Cohere Technologies

Mr. Gopannan is an Intel Innovator and active evangelist of Microservices and Private 5G/Telco/Edge Cloud architectures. Prior to Cohere, Mr. Gopannan was the Head of Product Engineering at Lumina where he led 5G product strategy and product development. Before Lumina, he led Ericsson’s... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 2:10pm - 2:40pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

2:40pm EDT

DPDK-Based User-Plane Upgrade for OCUDU: Crypto Engine & N3/F1-U Transport Interfaces - Ved Prajapati, Dell Technologies & Vinay Revankar, Dell Technologies

Wednesday October 21, 2026 2:40pm - 3:10pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

OCUDU gives the Telecom industry a 3GPP and O-RAN compliant, open-source CU/DU stack with multiple Internal Splits and Open Fronthaul Split options. The OCUDU stack is built over a very capable Software architecture, which is easy to scale. But the user plane - specifically the Crypto engine and the N3/F1-U transport interfaces, still rely on general-purpose software primitives that are designed for limited throughput. The mbedTLS based Crypto processes one packet at a time with no session persistence and no batch processing. The N3 and F1-U use kernel UDP sockets with multiple memory copies, syscall overhead, and I/O interrupts. This results in throughput capping at 2–5 Gbps per core and limits the user-plane scalability.
Here is a 2-phase proposal to replace these bottlenecks with DPDK-based alternatives, while preserving existing implementations as fallback option.
Phase 1 - DPDK Crypto Engine. Replace the mbedTLS crypto path in PDCP with DPDK Cryptodev. Today, OCUDU’s security_engine_impl performs:
Phase 2 - DPDK-Based N3 & F1-U Transport (Evolution). Replace the kernel UDP socket interfaces for N3 (toward UPF) and F1-U (toward O-DU and inside O-DU) with DPDK poll-mode drivers.

Speakers

Ved Prajapati

Software Senior Principal Engineer, Dell Technologies

Ved Prajapati is a Software Senior Principal Engineer at Dell Technologies, where he oversees the architecture, design and development of the CU Control-Plane and User-Plane for Dell's 5G Open RAN portfolio. His 20+ years of career spans across the evolution from 2G, 4G LTE, 5G NR... Read More →

Vinay Revankar

Technical Staff, Software Engineering, Dell Technologies

Vinay Ramdas Revankar is Technical Staff, Software Engineering in 5G Systems at Dell Technologies’ Federal 5G organization. With approximately 20 years of experience across Layer 2 protocol development in LTE and 5G — spanning MAC scheduling, RLC, transport layers, and O-RAN fronthaul... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 2:40pm - 3:10pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

3:10pm EDT

Coffee Break

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:10pm - 3:40pm EDT

Foyer

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:10pm - 3:40pm EDT
Foyer

Meals / Breaks / Special Events

3:40pm EDT

United States Marine Corps Expeditionary OCUDU Deployments - Lucas Vancina, United States Marine Corps & Andy Tran, Naval Information Warfare Center

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:40pm - 4:10pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

In this technical and operational case study, the Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity (MCTSSA) and Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific Tactical Cellular Lab (TCL) will present how they deployed OCUDU to provide 5G at the tactical edge for expeditionary military operations. During a military exercise in the spring of 2026, the TCL rapidly installed and deployed a gNB on a military base in the Western Pacific using commercial-of-the-shelf equipment. The deployment of OCUDU, Open5GS, and an O-RU (n77) from Dell Technologies provided mobile access to the Marine Corps' tactical network across an entire airfield. Topics of interest in the discussion will include: (1) Distributed core network architecture and network slicing, (2) Benefits of ORAN/OCUDU for new RU integration, (3) Hardware considerations to support expeditionary operations, (4) Future tactical use-cases for OCUDU and ORAN, (5) Importance of interoperability with O-RAN standards and (6) Challenges and areas for improvement to use OCUDU to provide 5G coverage at the tactical edge.

Speakers

Lucas Vancina

Tactical Cellular Architect, United States Marine Corps

Lucas Vancina is a native of Illinois, USA. He has been a Communications Officer and wireless networking specialist in the United States Marine Corps for almost a decade and has experience in tactical data networking, expeditionary and amphibious operations, and communications planning... Read More →

Andy Tran

Software Engineer, Naval Information Warfare Center

Andy Tran spearheaded the research, development, and deployment of 5G cellular systems across the Navy and Marine Corps, specifically enhancing communications capabilities at the tactical edge of the battlefield. Beyond deployment, they have conducted rigorous analysis on the vulnerabilities... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 3:40pm - 4:10pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

4:05pm EDT

Productionizing and Hardening OCUDU for Enterprise and Defense Deployments - Rajesh Rasalkar, Sempre.AI

Wednesday October 21, 2026 4:05pm - 4:35pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

Integrating OCUDU for research purpose is quite simple, however a mission critical deployable system, especially in constrained environments introduces a complex set of engineering challenges. At SEMPRE, we have taken OCUDU from source code to deployed edge systems supporting commercial and mission-critical defense applications. This session will discuss hardening OCUDU for constrained edge environments, including software packaging and configuration, zero-trust architectures, timing and synchronization in GNSS-denied conditions, and disconnected operations, field performance, fault recovery, lifecycle management, and AI-assisted tools for unattended operations.
We will also share practical lessons from system bring-up, platform integration, performance tuning, and the stability challenges encountered moving OCUDU into operational environments. We will highlight how the same hardened baseline can support capabilities beyond connectivity, including ISAC-based small UAS detection and multi-sensor fusion. Finally, we will identify opportunities to reduce deployment complexity, improve production readiness, and make OCUDU easier to adopt across for enterprise and defense use cases.

Speakers

Rajesh Rasalkar

Head of AI Research, Sempre.AI

Rajesh Rasalkar is a technology executive, entrepreneur, and wireless AI/ML architect with 25+ years of experience in wireless networking, cloud, edge computing, AI/ML, and telecommunications. He is Head of Engineering at SEMPRE.ai and PhoenixAI Technologies. At Meta, he led multiple... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 4:05pm - 4:35pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

4:35pm EDT

An AI-Driven Security Operator (AISecOps) for OCUDU - Haohuang Wen, SE-RAN.ai

Wednesday October 21, 2026 4:35pm - 5:05pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

Operating secure and resilient open-source RAN stacks such as OCUDU remains challenging, particularly for fine-grained runtime observability as well as real-time detection/mitigation of faults and security threats. This presentation introduces an AI-driven Security Operator (AISecOps) framework designed to harden the OCUDU architecture with self-healing and self-defending capabilities.

At its core the AISecOps operator leverages extended Berkeley Packet Filters (eBPF) technology to non-invasively extract real-time RAN-to-Core control plane and KPM telemetry, requiring zero source code modifications. This telemetry feeds a neurosymbolic diagnostic engine that combines deep-learning-based anomaly detection with reasoning-based safety guardrails to detect runtime fault and threat events. Moving beyond passive alerts, a knowledge-grounded agentic AI operator delivers autonomous threat incidents analysis, root-cause diagnostics, and mitigation response.

Attendees will learn how to deploy eBPF into OCUDU for deep security observability, and how agentic AI can automate the security incident handling cycle and execute fully autonomous or human-in-the-loop remediation at the edge.

Speakers

Haohuang Wen

Co-Founder and Technical Lead, SE-RAN.ai

Haohuang Wen is Co-Founder and Technical Lead at SE-RAN.ai, where he drives AI-driven SecOps solutions for next-generation cellular networks. He leads research and engineering initiatives specializing in securing 5G/6G/OpenRAN infrastructures through real-time RAN observability and... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 4:35pm - 5:05pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

5:05pm EDT

Zero-Trust Private 5G With Security-Hardened and Validated OCUDU GNBs - Dora Boviz, Dell Technologies

Wednesday October 21, 2026 5:05pm - 5:35pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

For many OCUDU target deployments an outage is a safety event, not just a bad customer experience: factory floors here robots and machine-vision safety loops depend on the network for low-latency control, and military and tactical sites running drone and robot command-and-control and ISAC. End users in those settings stop asking only about throughput and coverage and start asking two harder questions: can you prove it is secure, and can you keep it running while someone is attacking it?
This talk treats security and availability as one problem and proposes a common, modular security-validation framework that any OCUDU-based gNB product can adopt across vendors. I will walk the full trust chain (operator → SMO → management plane → gNB → open fronthaul → O-RU → edge), cover DoS resilience, provide a gap analysis against FIPS, DISA STIG and Common Criteria, and share a prioritized roadmap for hardening 5G and beyond Radio Access Networks built on OCUDU.
Attendees will leave with a proposed security hardening areas, a concrete understanding of where FIPS/STIG/Common Criteria apply, and a starting definition of a shared validation framework they can adopt and contribute to.

Speakers

Dora Boviz

Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Dell Technologies

Dora Boviz is a DMTS at Dell Technologies leading architecture definition for private 5G. She holds a PhD from CentraleSupelec. An early O-RAN practitioner, she has driven the security-hardening of Dell's private 5G network solution - spanning STIG compliance, Common Criteria, high... Read More →

Wednesday October 21, 2026 5:05pm - 5:35pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Breakout Sessions

5:40pm EDT

Closing Remarks

Wednesday October 21, 2026 5:40pm - 5:55pm EDT

Boeing Auditorium

Wednesday October 21, 2026 5:40pm - 5:55pm EDT
Boeing Auditorium

Keynote Sessions

8:00am EDT

8:45am EDT

8:50am EDT

10:10am EDT

10:10am EDT

10:40am EDT

11:10am EDT

11:40am EDT

12:10pm EDT

1:00pm EDT

1:10pm EDT

1:40pm EDT

2:10pm EDT

2:40pm EDT

3:10pm EDT

3:40pm EDT

4:05pm EDT

4:35pm EDT

5:05pm EDT

5:40pm EDT

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