While Open RAN vendors are focused on hardware/software disaggregation and interoperability, operators also need RAN reaggregation
As commercial Open RAN deployments, particularly in brownfield network environments, begin to ramp, the longstanding focus on ensuring interoperability between disaggregated radio hardware and software could stand to move more quickly. An assortment of industry experts examined the topic at the recent Open RAN Global Forum–available on demand here–in a discussion aptly led by Telecom Infra Project Executive Director Kristian Toivo.
Toivo framed the big picture of interoperability: “How do we make that efficient from a cost point of view, but also reducing complexity in the process? And why is this important? As a bit of a context to the discussion, basically building, integrating, testing, and deploying RAN solutions is among the most complex things one can do in communication networking.”
He continued: “it’s essential we work on how we can make this process, these efforts, more reasonable, and how those efforts also lead to the results that are enabling an industrialized process, enabling deployment at scale and the possibility to support the systems in an optimal way.”
Vodafone is a good example of the pace associated with getting through interoperability testing to scaled deployment. Vodafone UK turned on its first 4G Open RAN site in August 2020 at the Royal Welsh Showground in Polys, Wales. Voda’s first Open RAN 5G site came online in January 2022, then in December 2022 activation of more sites in more urban areas got underway. In August this year, the operator announced plans to deploy 2,500 similar sites by 2027 using technology and services from vendors Capgemini, Dell Technologies, INtel, Keysight, Samsung Networks and Wind River.
According to Vodafone’s Head of Open RAN Paco Martin, “I think we are…exactly at the very, very key moment where we need to prove that after we disaggregated everything, we can aggregate it back again. And I would say there are two main challenges.” The first is achieving the right quality of radio performance at the right cost.
“You need to do also that across multiple suppliers,” he said. “Because it’s not just one simple configuration, you need to be able to offer to the market multiple solutions that eventually are interoperable as well. And apart from being able to deliver the quality once and to do it later with multiple suppliers, you need to be able to do it efficiently. So that will be the second point, to be able to do it efficiently. And I think as the overall in technology, we are at the right step now proving that Open RAN can work, but now the challenge is running the interoperability in the right way.”
“It’s fundamentally critical to have an automation framework” for Open RAN interoperability teseting
Based on comments from the test and measurement perspective, the key to driving efficiency in the process is automating the process. As Spirent VP of Product Management James Kimery put it, “One of the things that we identified early on is perhaps there are new tests that have to be run. There might be new instrument simulations that are integrated into testbeds that are really new in terms of testing these interfaces. And then now that we have maybe an additional cost in terms of test, test time is critical, and therefore, automation…before it was maybe a luxury or a way to save costs. Now we believe it’s fundamentally critical to have an automation framework in the testing. Because with multiple vendors, you have multiple updates, you have bug fixes, there’s a lot of complexity that have to deal with version controls. And you have to revert back to a baseline at some level and automation sort of gives you the keys to do that in a reliable and repeatable manner.”
Viavi’s Ian Wong, director of RF and wireless architecture, who also holds a leadership position within the O-RAN Alliance, noted progress around ecosystem development as evidenced by 15 O-RAN Alliance-hosted Open Test and Integration Centers. “These are good signs of the vibrancy and excitement…And going back to the automation and efficiency point, I think we definitely need to think about how to, let’s call it leverage the ecosystem, leverage the know-how that’s around to really build up… [and] use new tools like machine learning…fas a new tool to improve efficiencies in testing.”
“Automation would be great,” agreed Digital Catapult Senior Manager Amrit Heer. Digital Catapult operators SONIC Labs to facilitate product interoperability testing and integration; so far they’ve worked with around 20 vendors on about 59 products. Automation, he said, “would speed up our testing capability…If we could put test cases, test plans together, that would really make us more efficient and get us to the point where we got new releases,we can do that fairly quickly. Ultimately, we’re looking at traditional vendors, they have a big product test house, we try to replicate that in our labs.”
“Bringing innovation to the market is motivating”
For its part, Wind River has had some big wins in the Open RAN space with major operators in North America, Europe and Japan. The company provides a cloud-native Kubernetes platform to manage and automate operations end to end. Vice President of Product Management Randy Cox acknowledged those successes, saying, “I think while there certainly are challenges, and if you think about what we’re, as an industry, up against, what we need to be able to achieve and exceed actually, is the same kind of performance as our legacy and traditional networks…I think there’s definitely examples where we are achieving this kind of legacy-type performance. So I think we shouldn’t lose sight of the great progress that we’ve made.”
Talking through challenges, Cox noted a focus on continuing to drive replicability which requires a higher degree of “ecosystem planning” and bringing forward multi-vendor integration activities. “Those are two things that It hink help in the challenging environment that we’re in…Bringing innovative topics to market is really an incentive between partners. And as I look at this, bringing innovation to the market is motivating.”
Picking up on the integration point, Martin said that major operators need to acknowledge that they have major responsibility on piecing together disaggregated with systems, while also acknowledging that operators are not able to do that alone.
“There are many operators in the industry, but not everybody is at the same level of ability or capacity to invest on an area that was before an area of the supplier,” he said. “The integration is not the natural space for operators. So I think first some of us, we need to acknowledge their responsibility…I can work on a certain configuration just for Vodafone, but that will not go too far. We need to make sure that we can have multiple instances and that we do it efficiently. And I think for that purpose, we need a collaboration and we need the support of someone co-coordinating that.” And to fill that role of organized collaboration, Martin called out moderator Toivo’s organization, TIP.
“In a way when we talk about Open RAN,” Toivo said, “it requires collaborations on all levels, including on the test house and lab side. So everybody can prepare for the common approach and create that industrialized platform.”
