Thursday, February 18, 2021

O-RAN Alliance hosts virtual demos at MWC Shanghai 2021

The O-RAN ALLIANCE is hosting a virtual O-RAN Open Summit and demos at next week's MWC Shanghai 2021.

Two O-RAN demonstrations are planned to be presented at the MWC Shanghai 2021:

  • Sageran is demonstrating a complete O-RAN white-box small cell solution based on an x86 platform with an FPGA Accelerator card that showcases a stand-alone end-to-end use case using white box hardware for an indoor cell which supports MIMO with 4T4R. T
  • VIAVI and Rohde & Schwarz are jointly demonstrating validation of open fronthaul performance. As network operators adopt disaggregated, multi-vendor networks, rigorous testing of performance and interoperability must accompany conformance testing. This demo showcases generation and delivery of typical standards based testcase IQ data to the O-RU utilizing the Lower Layer Split Option 7.2x fronthaul interface with the VIAVI TM500 O-RU Tester. Moreover, uplink and downlink fronthaul logs are captured, and RF signal generation and capture are performed using the Rohde & Schwarz VSG and VSA hardware with VSE Software for RF and IQ signal analysis. Testcase workflow is simplified for the end user utilizing the VIAVI O-RU Test Manager, providing a single point of test control. 


5 more virtual demos for MWC Shanghai 2021 have enriched the O-RAN Virtual Exhibition:

  • ITRI is demonstrating traffic steering xApps and Near-Real-Time Radio Intelligent Controller platform utilizing E2 procedures to monitor cell and UE metrics generated by RAN simulator and to offload some UE to neighbor cells such that the A1 policy is guaranteed.
  • NVIDIA and VMWare are jointly demonstrating PoC of Aerial 5G gNB Layer-1 orchestration on VMWare telco cloud platform. This demo showcases NVIDIA Aerial SDK as cloud native function, with docker containers and Kubernetes manifests. Aerial cuBB onboarded to VMWare telco cloud platform offers service agility, operational efficiency and reduced CAPEX/OPEX through MANO.
  • Viettel is demonstrating an end-to-end-solution based on Intel server (Xeon-D) with NIC (XXV710-DA2T) that is integrated with an outdoor micro O-RU via an Open Fronthaul Interface. The base station connects with EPC and Viettel’s eNB perform a complete NSA (Option 3X) white-box base station solution and ready for Commercial Deployment. The integrated system is verified using a commercial UE through the attach and speed test.
  • Altiostar has teamed up with Airtel and NEC to demonstrate interoperability testing and integration of massive MIMO radio units (O-RU) and virtualized distributed units (O-DU) running on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) servers. The demonstration features a commercial end-to-end Open Fronthaul interface based on O-RAN specifications.
  • Parallel Wireless is demonstrating 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G O-RAN based macro Open RAN to expand and modernize cellular networks with reduced TCO & simplified maintenance. It’s been proven in rural in 50+ networks globally and is now scalable for urban 2G 3G 4G while unleashing the full 5G potential.

The O-RAN alliance also welcomed LG U+ as its 28th operator member.