Networks are becoming more open, flexible, programmable, and scalable. Radio networks are no exception. That’s why several of the world’s largest cellular providers and a few of their suppliers have come together to form the xRAN Foundation. And it’s why Nokia (News - Alert) recently became a foundation member.
The xRAN Foundation is working to create a modular architecture for radio networks. It will decouple the control plane from the user plane, standardize user plane silicon and software with open interfaces, logically centralize network intelligence and state, and abstract network infrastructure from business applications.
The group’s first order of business is to create standards for north and south bound interfaces, which should enable service providers to expedite service deployment, allow RAN software to run on commercial-off-the-shelf hardware, and support edge networking. Those first standards are expected to be released by early 2018.
Aricent, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Intel Corp., Radisys, SK Telecom, Texas Instruments (News - Alert), and Stanford University established the foundation a year ago October. Mavenir and Verizon are also among the group’s members. And now so is Nokia, a well-established supplier of network infrastructure, including cellular solutions.
In an October 2016 xRAN blog, Sachin Katti explained that there is a need for a new radio access network architecture because the current RAN architecture has become “a barrier to operational efficiency and innovation.” Katti, a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University, noted that the RAN network as it now stands “is proprietary, expensive to scale, hard to program, and cumbersome to introduce new business applications beyond connectivity.” Meanwhile, he noted, “traffic is
As a result, he added, we need networks that are denser and more tightly coordinated as well as dynamic, so they can meet the various demands of different applications.
“They will have to dynamically switch between providing low latency connectivity for automotive applications, to predictable high throughput connectivity for video, persistent reliable connectivity for data, etc.,” he said.
Edited by
Mandi Nowitz
