Small Cell Forum hosted an open industry Small Cells World Summit webinar, on December 9, 2020, on the topic of Small Cell Open RAN. It included panelists from companies across the global Small Cell eco-system - Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Radisys, Reliance Jio and Picocom. The panel shared insight into SCF’s FAPI and Option 6 open interfaces and their applications within 3GPP and O-RAN frameworks.
The video of the webinar as follows:
Agenda and speakers:
Julius Robson, Chief Strategy Officer, SCF - Small Cell Open RAN specifications: 5G FAPI and Option 6
Andrei Radulescu, Senior Staff Engineer, Qualcomm - FAPI: MAC/PHY interface for Small and Macro Cells
Ganesh Shenbagaraman, Head of Integrated Products and Ecosystems, Radisys - Network FAPI deployment scenarios and O-RAN alignment
Ravi Sinha, Director, TechDev and Solutions (4G, 5G & MEC Solutions), Reliance Jio - Building the small cell ecosystem around FAPI components and Option6 interfaces
Vicky Messer, Director Product Management, Picocom - nFAPI test support
It was interesting to see that while the industry has changed the definition of MEC to Multi-access Edge Computing, SKT still refers to it as Mobile Edge Cloud. As SKT has now crossed over 10 million 5G subscribers, they have noticed a lot of demand for Edge compute capability. While there is a demand, enterprises, factories, buildings, etc. are not interested in managing their own infrastructure. They would rather somebody else provides the services. This is where SK Telecom sees new business opportunities in the future. Along with the high throughput, high capacity and low latency, security and privacy is very important as well.
As the services move to edge, there is more predictibility on QoE and the latecny can be reduced to as low as 1ms which is a huge benefit to critical applications. While they are not there yet, they are moving towards that goal. There is also a huge opportunity for public cloud providers here.
SKT has 2 main deployment models as can be seen. The public edge where they have data centres distributed throughout the country and can hence provide MEC services to 5G users nationwide. On the other hand, On-site edge is useful for providing private MEC services to enterprise and government users. Ideal for smart factories, smart hospitals, offices, etc. In both cases, SKT are open to collaborate with the users, communities, open source, big companies, etc.
Finally, SKT MEC Architecture can be seen in the picture above. The 5G network and 5G-MEC gateway can be seen which is connected with the compute and storage resources which are in turn connected to SKT tech assets or other operator platform or public cloud platform as required. The video provides more details including the SKT MEC Architecture details.
The slides are available to the registered users here and the talk is embedded as follows:
Late last year, Samsung launched the Full Suite of 5G Indoor Products aimed at improving 5G connectivity indoors. As we move to higher frequencies for 5G, especially mmWave, alternative solutions will definitely be required to provide higher data rates.
As can be seen in the picture above, there are three different solutions for different scenarios. The brochure here and this website here provides details but I have highlighted the relevant information below:
Link Cell is a compact indoor small cell that offers robust, ubiquitous in-building 5G mmWave coverage to deliver the high bandwidth, low latency and fast throughput needs for these businesses and public venues. The indoor solution can connect a large number of indoor users to data applications where signals from the outside 5G mmWave networks are hard to reach, enhancing productivity and providing a premium business experience. For enterprises that require dedicated connectivity and additional security needs the Link Cell can also serve as the foundation for a 5G private network. By combining a private 5G Core with Link Cells, an enterprise can have a secure, ultra-reliable, high-speed, low-latency 5G network that can accelerate their automation and digitization efforts.
To meet indoor coverage demands, particularly where capacity expansion is required or anticipated in the near future, Samsung offers a 5G Active DAS (Distributed Antenna System) solution called the Link HubPro. This system is especially useful in large buildings with extensive IT infrastructure. The solution includes two main components: a Radio Hub and Indoor Radio, and supports more diverse spectrums including, low-band and mid-band. With this simple architecture, single Radio Hub will allow a mobile operator to connect multiple radios and making multiple radios work as a single cell to build wide 5G indoor coverage without interference.
Samsung Link Hub acts as a radio to connecting passive antennas supporting both LTE and 5G. If a building already has an existing passive DAS system, service providers can easily upgrade their indoor network to provide 5G service and reuse legacy cabling to save both time and costs. The Link Hub will act as a bridge between the 5G baseband and antennas by converting data traffic to radio signals, and vice versa, making 5G data traffic possible. The Link Hub can be managed remotely by an operator’s network management system.
The video below explains the solution in detail:
Here is another video that explains the indoor small cell, Samsung Link Cell
As a final thing, it should be pointed out that Samsung’s Link Cell features the Qualcomm 5G RAN platform, which builds on the collaboration between Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and Samsung.
I have detailed many different details from NTT Docomo over the years as they are not just one of the few innovative operators but are also very happy to share lots of interesting details. Their RAN Infrastructure post was posted in November but already reached top 5 posts on this blog.
In a recent interview with Telecom TV, Sadayuki Abeta, Vice President & General Manager of the Radio Access Network Development Department at NTT DOCOMO, talked about the Japanese operator’s experience with Open RAN deployments, starting with its multi-vendor 4G network and now with its 5G rollouts. His talk, embedded below, points out that even though they have not yet adopted vRAN, they consider their network to be Open RAN based on the open Interface principles.
Back in September, Docomo had couple of announcements about the 5G Base Stations based on O-RAN specifications.
The first announcement was about Docomo and NEC announcing that they have expanded multi-vendor interoperability by interconnecting a new 5G base station baseband unit (5G-CU/DU), developed by NEC and Samsung Electronics and compliant with O-RAN Alliance specifications, with 5G base station remote radio units (5G-RUs) of other vendors on DOCOMO's commercial network.
Expanding multi-vendor interoperability based on O-RAN open interface specifications will enable the most appropriate base stations to be used depending on deployment scenarios and taking advantage of specific vendor and equipment characteristics. This will drive the rapid and flexible development of 5G service areas.
The new 5G base station baseband unit from NEC realizes multi-vendor interoperability and is the result of a partnership between NEC and Samsung. It is interoperable with all existing vendors' 5G base station remote units in DOCOMO's network owing to its adoption of O-RAN open fronthaul specifications; it is also compatible with all existing 4G base stations in DOCOMO's network thanks to its adoption of O-RAN open X2 specifications.
Multi-vendor interoperability using O-RAN open fronthaul specifications was also confirmed for NEC's macro-cell 5G-RU, which provides wide area coverage, and for NEC's fronthaul multiplexer (5G-FHM), which copies and combines the fronthaul signals to and from multiple 5G-RUs to form a single area; both are new 5G base station equipment offerings.
During their collaboration, DOCOMO selected the test items, executed the multi-vendor interoperability tests and analyzed the results; NEC and Samsung Electronics supplied the 5G base station equipment and analyzed the test results.
The second announcement was about DOCOMO, Fujitsu and NEC achieving what they believe to be the world's first carrier aggregation using 5G frequency bands in a multi-vendor radio access network (RAN) based on O-RAN specs.
Carrier aggregation was achieved using the 3.7GHz and 4.5GHz bands designated for 5G networks. In addition to this dual connectivity achieved by bundling LTE bands, downlink speeds of 4.2 Gbps will be achievable, enabling ultra-fast data transmission. DOCOMO already provides commercial 5G services in Japan through a multi-vendor RAN that connects baseband units and remote radio units manufactured by Fujitsu and NEC based on O-RAN's open fronthaul specifications. The same system configuration was used to achieve this 5G carrier aggregation.
Mr. Nozomu Watanabe, Senior Executive, NEC Corporation and Mr. Sadayuki Abeta, VP & GM, Radio Access Network Development Department, NTT DOCOMO explained their Open RAN vision and approach in a Telecom TV interview baback in November which is embedded below.
It's just a matter of time before we see more of these interoperability announcements, not just for 4G & 5G but also for 2G & 3G.
Despite the meteoric growth of the Internet and broadband connectivity, 3.7 billion people remain offline and are excluded from the direct benefits of the global digital economy, says a new publication just released by the International Telecommunication Union, The Last-Mile Internet Connectivity Solutions Guide: Sustainable connectivity options for unconnected sites. The press release said:
While there are multiple constraints on Internet access and use, the Solutions Guide addresses those posed by gaps in infrastructure coverage and service affordability. The low return on investment in network deployment in sparsely populated areas means that, in many developing countries, connectivity is largely limited to urban areas, leaving rural and remote areas totally cut off.
Moreover, even when telecommunication networks are present, access to the Internet may be limited by prohibitively high prices, and lower-income individuals and families may be priced out of connectivity.
Offline populations are particularly concentrated in least developed countries (LDCs), where according to latest ITU data, only 19 per cent of individuals were online in 2019. Regionally, in Africa and Asia-Pacific, less than half the population is online: 29 and 45 per cent respectively.
Written from the perspective of localities and users in areas without Internet access, the Solutions Guide contains tools, service interventions and policy solutions that can help policy-makers to select and customize appropriate solutions to extend Internet access to their localities, taking into account their unique characteristics.
The guide is divided into four main steps that outline the planning and policy development phases of interventions to encourage infrastructure deployments:
Identify digitally unconnected and underserved regions;
Review options from existing solutions;
Select sustainable solutions that best fit the given situation;
Implement interventions to extend sustainable connectivity service.
The guide draws on lessons learned by governments, service providers, technology vendors, international organizations, multilateral development banks, bilateral donors, academia and others over the past 30 years. It is intended to be a living, active guide that is continuously updated and revised.
In addition to the Solutions Guide, ITU is developing a range of resources to help Member States address last-mile connectivity challenges, including a database of case studies and interactive last-mile connectivity diagnostic and decision-making tools. It also offers capacity-building services and assistance on design, planning and implementation, including identifying unconnected areas and providing expert guidance on the selection of sustainable technical, financial and regulatory solutions.
The PDF is available here. You can find the database and other information here.
Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and its members have developed a Total Site Solution (TSS), an optimized, lean site configuration specifically adapted to ultra-rural environments. TIP announced the solution back in December. A clear idea can be obtained from the excellent video accompanying the announcement as follows:
Deploying reliable and high-speed networks to ultra-rural communities has long been one of the greatest challenges for the telecoms industry. The combination of lower population densities, lack of existing infrastructure, and availability of local expertise means that expanding networks into these areas has traditionally not been economically viable, leaving significant areas of the world unconnected. To help catalyze the industry to find a solution to this challenge, the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and its members have developed the Total Site Solution (TSS), an optimized, lean site configuration specifically adapted to ultra-rural environments.
The solution which incorporates a range of essential elements, including low-power RAN equipment, off-grid energy solutions and satellite backhaul links, has been created by a diverse group of technology partners, including vendors and local system integrators, who have built, tested, and validated each of the necessary elements and their interoperability, as well as their ability to work with TIM Brasil’s core network.
The first TSS use case targets greenfield deployments to off-grid populations of less than 5,000 people, looking to address mid to low amounts of data consumption, through a “Town Center Model” for 4G coverage and supporting VoLTE for voice service.
For the use case, TIM Brasil created the technical and business use case requirements in a Pilot Program. Initial lab trials were then conducted at TIP’s Community Lab in North Los Angeles, California, in collaboration with vendors BaiCells (RAN); Morningstar (power systems); and Gilat (satellite backhaul links) to evaluate the interoperability of the elements. After the validation in the labs, local system integrator partners WLLCTEL and Zurich/Amerinode created cost-optimized site designs tailored for ultra-rural environments. Two test sites were subsequently built to prove the design and to simplify the construction process of the sites, after which TIM Brasil conducted a field trial to test the effectiveness of the solution in preparation for market trials and commercial deployments.
TSS has now gone through TIP’s Rural Site Configuration PlugFest which has expanded the initial configuration to include additional RAN (Airspan, Parallel Wireless, VNL) and VSAT backhaul equipment vendors (including ST Engineering iDirect), and validated them against a comprehensive test plan. These proven configurations are now listed on TIP Exchange and PlugFest, making them available to all members for further trials of TSS in other areas of the world.
Next steps for the TSS project include:
Sharing ultra-rural TSS test plans, site installation runbook, and RSC PlugFest summary with TIP community (linked on TSS website)
Working with additional partners globally to launch the proven ultra-rural TSS configuration into networks, bringing more unconnected people online
Working with ecosystem partners across the NaaS Solution Group to apply the proven TSS incubator model to develop additional NaaS use-cases
Market trial with TIM Brasil in the first half of 2021
The TSS sub-site has documents and additional details here.
We have seen some interesting lamp posts and poles concept on this blog (see related posts at the end of this post). Now, Nokia announced last week that it is providing industrial-grade, 5G-ready private wireless networking to the Digital City Pole project in Leuven, Belgium. The project paves the way for future citywide 5G connectivity that will stimulate local innovation, drive productivity and create jobs, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses.
Working with the consortium led by TRES, Nokia is demonstrating use cases that leverage IoT intelligence across a new secure city data backbone. In doing so, the project will explore new revenue opportunities based on IoT data and energy marketplaces.
The TRES broader initiative will also see streetlight poles upgraded with energy-efficient LED lighting and electric vehicle charging points. Distributed extensively in urban areas, digital city poles provide an effective platform to host high performance connectivity and sensors as cities seek to introduce ubiquitous smart city services.
The Digital City Pole project is supported by the Flemish Government and the EU Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Leuven, which was recently awarded European Capital of Innovation 2020, is committed to new technologies to boost sustainable development and it aims to become one of Europe's Labs of the Future through a mission-oriented model that facilitates collaborative innovation.
In addition to Nokia 5G-ready connectivity deployed in partnership with local service provider Citymesh, Nokia will also supply its Gigabit Passive Optical Networks technology for ultra-high-speed connectivity over an end-to-end broadband network.
TRES's website does not have much information but this presentation from last year has some details of this project. The following video explains the concept and shows some real deployment and use case examples
We will hopefully hear more about the results, etc. next year.
ZTE announced the Pad base stations back in 2015. From the press release:
The Pad series base stations use a distributed architecture to provide flexible networking models, meeting multi-point and multi-sector coverage requirements. The Pad baseband unit (BBU) is only one third the size of similar products making it the world's smallest outdoor BBU, and can be installed in a concealed location.
The Pad series also features a newly released remote radio unit (RRU), The Pad RRU is a similar size to a tablet, has built-in antennas, and can be mounted to poles, walls, or other common locations in stations, buildings, and streets, allowing for easy site selection for intensive coverage. With low transmit power and interference, the Pad RRU provides seamless network coverage through macro-micro coordination. Multiple Pad RRUs can be included in a logical cell to reduce handovers and provide better user experience.
Earlier this year, ZTE announced in another press release:
ZTE and the Hangzhou branch of China Telecom have deployed the industry’s first 4G/5G dual-band micro RRU supporting 3.5 GHz frequency band in Hangzhou, China. With the downlink rate reaching 1.1Gbps, it can provide users with excellent 4G/5G network experiences.
Featuring 2.1GHz LTE anchors, the latest 4G/5G dual-band 4T4R products of ZTE’s 5G Pad RRU series can realize the fast NSA network commissioning, guaranteeing the service experience of 4G/5G coverage in a 5G SA network. Moreover, it supports 3G/4G/5G multi-mode, and 200 MHz continuous ultra-large bandwidth on 3.5 GHz frequency band.
In addition, the 4G/5G dual-band micro RRU is small in size, light in weight, and quick to deploy, thus effectively solving the challenge of insufficient site resources and realizing fast 5G signal coverage extension.
The pad RRU is usually installed on smart light poles, which integrate HD camera, environmental monitoring, weather sensor, screen, and new-energy vehicle charging functions. Therefore, smart light poles can monitor the real-time road conditions, such as flood, to avoid potential hazards.
Moreover, the smart light poles can be used as a site location for 5G micro RRUs to solve the problem of insufficient coverage, and transfer live information of smart light poles in real time.
iMacro base station was launched in 2015 as well. From the press release:
The new iMacro base station, with integrated RFUs (radio frequency unit) and antennas of compactness and high performance, was debuted at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2015 conference in Shanghai. iMacro joins other products of the ZTE multi-scenario coverage product family, including the Pad series outdoor base stations and Qcell indoor coverage solutions, helping operators to build high-quality 4G networks.
Due to a large number of pedestrian streets, commercial streets, residential areas, and other densely-populated areas alongside urban streets, it is difficult to build new sites, leading to increasingly prominent problems of urban street coverage. Integrated RF unit and antenna unit, ultra broadband power amplification, together with its small size, light weight, compact design, and even one device is capable of multiple frequency bands, ZTE iMacro base station is what exactly operators desire. Moreover, iMacro base station is featured with flexible and rapid deployment without any site resources, which effectively makes the deployment alongside urban streets easier.
The iMacro base station, which can be pole-mounted or wall-mounted, is suitable for installation on lampposts along urban roads and bus station awnings, and can even be placed on the lamp poles along the roads or building’s façade. In the absence of new site resources, the iMacro base station provides intensive coverage in densely-populated areas, effectively enhancing the quality and capacity of network coverage. In addition, the iMacro base station with a compact and elegant appearance can perfectly blend in with the surrounding environment.
In addition to the technology innovation, ZTE also concerns the friendliness and convenience of network deployment. iMacro can connected to external devices through a single power cable and an optical fiber that is connected to the BBU, and multiple iMacro base stations are connected to one remote BBU, allowing for flexible and rapid network deployment, and significantly reducing deployment costs.
Anyway, here is a recent video on PAD and iMacro that ZTE shared on their YouTube channel
At IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) 2020, Young Lee, Head of Network Architecture, Samsung Networks gave a keynote entitled “5G Network Evolution: Next Steps and Challenges.” The keynote emphasized the unbelievable rate of 5G deployment and coverage expansion, the 5G market status in Korea, the economic aspects of 5G deployment, and key technology drivers for 5G evolution. Some of the slides from that event is available here.
Young also wrote a couple of blog posts on "How to optimize total cost of ownership (TCO) to accelerate 5G network evolution". Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.
The picture at the top of this post is a fantastic summary of the posts as it shows what contributes to the increase of cost and what helps in reducing the network costs. Before proceeding further, if you do not understand TCO then please check out tutorial out.
Part 1 looks at the different RAN deployment architectures as can be seen in the picture above. Quoting from the blog:
In D-RAN (Distributed RAN), the baseband is co-located with radio. All the baseband functions such as PHY, MAC, RLC, PDCP, and RRC/SDAP are done in the cell site. As basebands are centralized at Edge Cloud/DC, there is gain with simplified radio operation and site leasing cost reduction. In this sense, C-RAN is clearly a cost optimizer.
C-RAN (Centralized RAN) comes with a higher transport cost. As all baseband processing functions are moved to a central hub site, this creates a large amount of data overhead between radio and baseband. Thus, C-RAN requires a very high capacity fronthaul transport network where you may need more fibers and efficient packet switching that supports stringent synchronization. To maintain the gain by centralized architecture, C-RAN requires a fronthaul solution that is economical and technically viable to remain as a cost-optimizer.
Having addressed all these drawbacks of C-RAN, vRAN (Virtualized RAN), the new architecture, is receiving strong interest within the industry. It further enhances the flexibility by virtualizing the functions of basebands in a common resource pool made up of the COTS (Commercial Off-the-Shelf) servers, allocating resources in a flexible manner according to traffic conditions. There is resource pooling gain with vRAN.
Resource Pooling gain comes from the programmable S/W control of total cell capacity allocation that can be dynamically changed per traffic conditions: for instance, when more traffic comes from some cell sites measured as the active number of UEs, then the UE allocation capacity for such cells can be dynamically increased. Likewise, when less traffic comes from some cell sites, the UE allocation capacity for such cells can be dynamically decreased.
On the other hand, O-RAN (Open RAN) can also provide cost efficiency and serve as one of the cost optimizers.
O-RAN function split is another opportunity to reduce the transport cost by off-loading some centralized Baseband L1 functions to the radio side. Option 7-2x is one of the standardized options by O-RAN and they are discussing other options such as Option 6.
O-RAN Function Split helps to reduce transport cost significantly.
Part 2 looks at reducing OPEX to make TCO lower. Four technology pillars are discussed in the blog post as can be seen from the picture above: automation, virtualization, cloudification and network slicing. Success in these four pillars, will accelerate the 5G evolution.
I am not providing the details here, best to check the Samsung blog post.
It is worth mentioning that every region, country and operator is different. While at the high level this makes complete sense, other operators may face completely different challenges. The main challenge all operators face is how to make more money as they have to continuously keep pumping money in network upgrades and new services. Nobody has an answer to the killer application and the killer use case.
