- The global adoption of O-RAN Alliance specifications by the
industry is creating the foundation for the future of Radio Access
Networks
- O-RAN growth continues, with Vodafone as the newest operator
member
- 22 planned MWC demonstrations of O-RAN-based equipment
implementations are being converted to an O-RAN virtual
showcase
The O-RAN Alliance continues to gain momentum in enabling the
Radio Access Network (RAN) industry to deliver intelligent, fully
interoperable, virtualized and open RAN. This global collaboration
represents a unique willingness to reach across borders and create
new platforms that will drive innovation for everyone.
Two years ago, 5 mobile carriers spanning the continents of
Asia, Europe, and North America joined forces to launch the O-RAN
Alliance as “a world-wide, carrier-led effort to drive new levels
of openness in the radio access network of next generation wireless
systems.” A year later, nearly 80 participating companies released
O-RAN’s first specification and technology demos.
Nine new operators have joined the O-RAN Alliance in 2019 and
2020, including Bell Canada, BT, Chunghwa Telecom, DISH Network,
KDDI, SoftBank Corp., Sprint and Vodafone. Now with over 160
companies (including 24 mobile operators across 4 continents),
O-RAN is governed by a global board spanning 4 continents and 11
countries (4 from Europe, 2 from China, 2 from India, 2 from Korea,
2 from US, and 1 each from Australia, Japan, and Singapore).
O-RAN’s emphasis on openness is reflected in its structure as an
open technical organization, where incumbent as well as emerging
industry players can join and contribute to its architecture and
specifications. The O-RAN Alliance has now approved 31
specifications, released 1.3M lines of open source code (in
partnership with the Linux Foundation), and held its first
multi-continent global plugfest.
“The adoption of the O-RAN Alliance by the industry is an
inspiring example of how operators and suppliers around the world
can sit down together to design and release technical standards
that work for everyone,” said Andre Fuetsch, Chairman of the O-RAN
Alliance and Chief Technology Officer of AT&T. “The O-RAN
Alliance now brings together a global force of 24 carriers
committed to improving the performance and efficiency of their
mobile networks. As the 5G era takes off, the O-RAN Alliance stands
poised to enable the network experiences that all of our customers
expect.”
“The O-RAN Alliance has rapidly grown from the five founding
mobile operators to more than 160 operators and contributors
comprising industry leading large vendors, small & medium
companies, start-ups and academic institutions,” said Alex Jinsung
Choi, COO of the O-RAN Alliance and SVP Strategy & Technology
Innovation, Deutsche Telekom. “We are proud to welcome such a
diversity of members in our joint effort to lead the industry
towards next generation open and smart RAN.”
The O-RAN Alliance members were prepared to showcase 22
demonstrations of real O-RAN-based equipment implementations at
Mobile World Congress (MWC), further proving the O-RAN Alliance’s
progress towards the maturity of open and smart RAN equipment. As a
result of MWC’s cancellation, many of these demonstrations will be
made available as part of a virtual showcase, which will be
announced soon.
“The progress being made through the O-RAN Alliance is real and
these demos will help to continue the group’s momentum,” said
Chih-Lin I, Co-chair of O-RAN Technical Steering Committee
(TSC).
Demo list:
AT&T and CommScope are showcasing O-RAN’s vendor agnostic
Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) Architecture and
O1 interface specification. The demo will perform live
configuration, performance, and fault management from CommScope’s
OneCell system at the Rutgers University WINLAB using Open Network
Automation Platform (ONAP) as the Service Management and
Orchestration (SMO).
China Mobile and BravoCom are co-sponsoring an intelligent RAN
control demo. This demo showcases a Near-real time Radio
Intelligent Controller (RIC) performing Radio Resource Management
(RRM) optimization, a video KQI prediction and RRM enforcement xAPP
using machine learning, and a non-real time RIC performing dynamic
cell-splitting/merging based on the KQI/KPI status of cell.
AT&T and Nokia are co-sponsoring a demo of the O-RAN OSC
open source near-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (near-RT RIC)
running at the network edge on an Akraino-based Open Cloud
Platform. The demonstration is based on live trials of the platform
conducted on AT&T’s 5G mmWave network and will showcase life
cycle management of xApps, specifically an admission control xApp
controlling RAN behavior.
China Mobile and Nokia are co-sponsoring an intelligent RAN
control demo. The demo will showcase AI-empowered QoE assurance of
Cloud VR with machine learning based radio available bandwidth and
QoE prediction to enable AI-adaptive rate adaptation.
Samsung and KDDI are co-sponsoring an intelligent RAN control
demo. This demo will showcase E2 Closed loop RAN Resource Control
and Network Slicing.
Sterlite will be sponsoring a demo on Intelligent RAN control.
This demo showcases a Non-Real Time Radio-Intelligent Controller
managing a machine learning algorithm that can predict cell load.
This load prediction model is used by a Mobility Load Balancing
xAPP in the Near-Real Time RIC Controller to manage the cell load
using performance metrics from the E2 nodes under varying mobility
scenarios.
VIAVI is sponsoring an open fronthaul demo consisting of an O-RU
emulator integrated with TM500 UE emulator which will be used to
test the O-DU connected over O-RAN open fronthaul. The ability for
vendors and operators to test the performance of gNBs based on
O-RAN architecture independently of O-RUs will be key to
accelerating commercialization of O-RAN technology.
NEC will show their O-RAN Open Fronthaul compliant small-cell
RUs that support the 3.7GHz, 4.5GHz and 28GHz bands.
Interoperability of these RUs with another vendor's CU/DU over the
Open Fronthaul interface has been verified by NTT DOCOMO and
deployed in their commercial 5G network.
Keysight and Xilinx are co-sponsoring two open fronthaul demos.
This demo consists of a Xilinx O-RAN enabled Antenna Array Radio
Unit demonstration using Keysight O-RAN O-DU emulation combined
with RF measurements. A second demo consists of a sub-6 GHz antenna
featuring a remote radio head with O-RAN compliant fronthaul
interface.
NVIDIA and Keysight are showcasing an open fronthaul demo. This
demo highlights interoperability between an NVIDIA Aerial
SDK-accelerated 5G gNodeB and a Keysight UeSIM over O-RAN compliant
fronthaul link.
AT&T, CommScope, and Intel are demonstrating mmWave 5G gNB
and 7.2x open fronthaul demo. This live demo showcases a virtual
reality application of a 360-degree zoo experience using Intel’s
FlexRAN to deliver live O-RAN 7.2x traffic to CommScope’s 5G mmWave
radio.
EXFO is sponsoring an open fronthaul demo. This demo consists of
an O-DU emulator connected to an O-RU emulator using the O-RAN open
fronthaul specification over an eCPRI protocol at 25Gbps.
SKT, Keysight and SOLiD are co-sponsoring an open fronthaul
demo. Keysight O-DU emulator will be used to test the SOLiD 28GHz
O-RU connected over O-RAN WG4 open fronthaul defined APIs over the
eCPRI interface. Also, 28GHz RFIC performance and beamforming
functionality will be evaluated for use in SKT’s 28GHz in-building
systems.
Mavenir will be sponsoring a demo on Open Fronthaul. This demo
showcases 4G and 5G RAN products using the O-RAN architecture with
split 7.2x and split 2 interfaces with MTI and NEC.
Radisys is sponsoring a multi-vendor ecosystem demo includes an
O-DU communicating with the O-RU operating in the 3.5GHz band (n78)
over the open front-haul (OFH) interface for gNB split option 7.2x.
This demo leverages components and technologies and can be adapted
to other configurations, such as frequency band and transmit power,
with minimal effort.
Ciena, Radisys, Wind River, AT&T and DISH Network are
co-sponsoring a demonstration of 5G Edge orchestration and
optimization. This demo consists of a multi-vendor implementation
of O-RAN O1 and O2 interfaces to drive dynamic optimal placement
and configuration of 5G RAN, Transport and 5G Core components to
support latency critical 5G Edge applications.
China Mobile and Lenovo are co-sponsoring a full-stack O-RAN
solution in combination with MEC applications. The demo features
O-RAN deployment scenario B, consisting of O-RAN cloud platform,
O-CU, O-DU, and O-RU. The edge cloud platform also hosts MEC
applications, enabling a 5G smart transportation use case.
Altran, Baicells and China Mobile are co-sponsoring a whitebox
hardware demo that showcases a stand-alone end-to-end use case
using whitebox hardware for an indoor pico cell.
China Mobile, Radisys, QCT and Intel are co-sponsoring a
whitebox hardware and O-RAN stack demo. This demo showcases an
end-to-end solution for 5G Stand Alone based on the O-RAN software
architecture and open fronthaul interface specifications.
China Mobile, ArrayComm, CIG, Altran, Wind River and IPLOOK are
co-sponsoring an O-RAN compliant whitebox and 5G stack demo. This
demo showcases an end-to-end 5G Stand Alone application based on
ARM hardware and cloud platform.
China Mobile, CertusNet, Lenovo and NTS are co-sponsoring the
demo of an integrated small cell solution based on cloudification
and virtualization. This demo showcases the decoupling of hardware
and software based on O-RAN architectural principles.
VMware and Netsia are co-sponsoring a live end-to-end Network
Slicing and Service Orchestration demo, using a multi-domain and
multi-cloud environment. The demo showcases network slices that are
built on-purpose for specific network services and optimized for
prescribed QoS SLAs, spawning over the Radio Access Network, Edge
Clouds, Transport Network, Core Clouds and Public Clouds.
About O-RAN Alliance
O-RAN Alliance is a world-wide community of more than 160 mobile
operators, vendors, and research & academic institutions
operating in the Radio Access Network (RAN) industry. As the RAN is
an essential part of any mobile network, O-RAN Alliance’s mission
is to re-shape the industry towards more intelligent, open,
virtualized and fully interoperable mobile networks. The new O-RAN
standards will enable a more competitive and vibrant RAN supplier
ecosystem with faster innovation to improve user experience.
O-RAN-compliant mobile networks will at the same time improve the
efficiency of RAN deployments as well as operations by the mobile
operators. To achieve this, O-RAN Alliance publishes new RAN
specifications, releases open software for the RAN, and supports
its members in integration and testing of their
implementations.
For a short video describing O-RAN’s progress, see
www.o-ran.org/videos
For more information please visit www.o-ran.org
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200220005795/en/
O-RAN Alliance PR Zbynek Dalecky pr@o-ran.org O-RAN
Alliance e.V. Buschkauler Weg 27 53347 Alfter/Germany