1.Introduction Cloud and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) for 5G networks represent a fundamental shift in how telecommunication networks are designed and managed. NFV decouples network functions from specialized hardware, allowing them to run as software on standard cloud infrastructure. This virtualization enables 5G networks to be more flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient by leveraging cloud-native principles and automation. It allows operators to dynamically alloca

1. Introduction Radio Access Networks are becoming more software-driven, disaggregated, and automation-centric. To handle the complexity of dense deployments, Massive MIMO, spectrum fragmentation, and diverse traffic profiles, operators are moving toward intelligent control loops in the RAN.This is where O-RAN Alliance’s RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) architecture—featuring rApps (non-real time, >1 second) and xApps (near-real time, 10 ms–1 s)—comes into play. These applica