Developing a Truly Open Virtualized RAN
Radio access network (RAN) deployments for 4G and earlier had relied on proprietary aggregated RF and Baseband equipment mainly from one dominant vendor and very few other vendors. Because of closed proprietary designs, it was very difficult to deploy multi vendor RAN equipment due to interoperability challenges.
Service providers worldwide are driving adoption of an open RAN for 5G, and in some cases for 4G as well. The O-RAN Alliance has defined a RAN architecture with Open, virtualized, AI enabled RAN architecture, that breaks down what was once a single-vendor, hardware centric RAN into several sections.
RAN-Wiser™ Hardware Agnostic RAN Framework for Truly Open RAN
The Total Cost of Ownership of RAN infrastructure is a major cost for Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). Reduction in the TCO will help in improving the profitability of MNOs. With the advent of 5G the MNO’s are moving towards Open RAN solutions. This is allowing them to move from single vendor to multi-vendor hardware architectures which are better optimized to run RAN workloads.
However there is a lack of portability in current DU software. This forces DU software vendors to maintain multiple software versions for multiple hardware platforms.
This whitepaper describes the development framework for a portable RAN solution. RAN-Wiser™ is a standardized software framework for RAN workloads which is integrated into a Telco cloud infrastructure software. It provides a uniform model for the hardware underneath and lowers the barrier to build portable RAN software. This solution will allow the mobile network operators to work with custom RAN hardware without sacrificing COTS solution benefits. This is an important step in the development of a Truly Open Virtualized RAN.
