NEC demonstrated its Open RAN massive MIMO capabilities for the O-RAN ALLIANCE Global PlugFest 2021 at five of its venues, hosted by leading operators and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP).
NEC said its massive MIMO open Radio Units have been successfully integrated with more O-CU, O-DU from Open RAN software vendors than any other supplier.
NEC and its subsidiary Netcracker participated in multiple PlugFest venues across the globe this year, demonstrating their commercially proven, Open RAN 5G massive MIMO radio units (O-RU), Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution (O-RAN SMO) and RAN software.
The companies participated in the following PlugFest venues:
Menlo Park, USA
This venue was hosted at the TIP Community Lab in Menlo Park (sponsored by Meta). NEC deployed its O-RU with Mavenir's O-CU/DU for multi-vendor interoperability.
Torino, Italy
Netcracker deployed its Open RAN Domain Orchestration solution, aligned with the O-RAN Service Management and Orchestration environment, at the Joint European O-RAN & TIP PlugFest venue hosted by European OTIC in TIM Innovation Lab - Torino. 5G RAN slice provisioning was validated using CU/DUs from Radisys based on the O1 interface.
Tokyo, Japan
Hosted by NTT DOCOMO, the operator and NEC succeeded in interoperability testing for 5G standalone (SA) built on 5G CU/DU and multi-vendor radio units (RUs). DOCOMO and NEC demonstrated the capability to migrate from a commercial 5G NSA into 5G SA through a software upgrade, using the same 5G CU/DU hardware.
NEC also deployed its O-RUs in a lab hosted by Rakuten Mobile and successfully completed verification of open fronthaul interfaces and
3GPP RF conformance using Keysight Technologies' test solution.
Seoul, South Korea
NEC contributed to the PlugFest venue hosted by LG UPlus in its 5G Innovation Lab in the LG Science Park, Seoul. NEC deployed O-RU in LG UPlus's lab with O-CU/DU from Altiostar, a Rakuten Symphony company, fronthaul gateway from DZS and Intel processors and FlexRAN reference software. 'E2E Open RAN on 5G standalone mode' was demonstrated using Keysight Technologies' test solution.
"Multi-vendor, high performance Open RAN is crucial to demonstrate market maturity. In 2021, the industry demonstrated great progress, and we are proud to have the first and only massive MIMO O-RAN product, making NEC the world's leader. We will continue working closely with customers and market-leading partners to deliver a vibrant ecosystem of open, high quality and high performance networks," states Patrick Lopez, Global VP of Product Management for 5G Products, NEC.
