echnical Specification 38.213 (2020). NR; Physical layer procedures for control Available at: www.3gpp.org (accessed May 29, 2020). ITU-RM.2047-0 (2013). Detailed specifications of the satellite radio interfaces of International Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced (IMT-Advanced), December 2013. ITU-R P.618-13 (2017). Propagation data and prediction methods required for the design of earth-space telecommunication systems, December 2017, December 2017. ITU-RP.681-10 (2017). Propagation data required for the design of earth-space land mobile telecommunication systems, December 2017. RP-193234 (2019). Solutions for NR to support non-terrestrial networks (NTN). Enabling Technologies 6.1 Introduction In the previous chapters we discussed the NG-RAN architectures defined in Release-15 and their evolution in Release-16 and -17, covering both architectures defined in 3GPP and other standards bodies and industry fora, for example, the O-RAN Alliance and Small Cell Forum. Architectures defined in these standards developing organizations (SDOs) are typically limited to what is essential to define a RAN and intentionally use an abstraction model that separates other technologies, which are required to build and operate a wireless network such as the transport network, virtualization technologies, and applications (e.g. multi-access edge computing [MEC]). In the present chapter we describe various technologies required to deploy NG-RAN, which are often either overlooked completely by 3GPP specifications or are addressed only partially. 6.2 Virtualization Sridhar Rajagopal Mavenir, USA In computing, virtualization typically refers to the idea of decoupling software from "real" hardware and thus allowing one to run said software on any platform, which provides a virtualized environment. The term was originally applied to hardware virtualization, which allows the running of multiple instances of (often different) operating systems on the same hardware, through the usage of virtual machines that appear to the operating system as a 