The xRAN Forum (xRAN) announced the approval and release of the xRAN Fronthaul Control, User and Synchronization (CUS) Plane Specification Version 2.0 and the xRAN Fronthaul Management Plane (MP) Specification Version 1.0.
The approvals allow vendors to develop new RRUs and BBUs for a wide range of deployment scenarios, which can be easily integrated with virtualized infrastructure & management systems using standardized data models.
The second major version of CUS-plane specification incorporates several enhancements over the first
version including:
• Support for 2 radio categories (A and B) to enable both simple and more complex functionality leveraging largely the same interface specification
• Additional compression modes to provide increased fronthaul bandwidth savings
• Support for critical items such as synchronization and timing to enable commercialization and interoperability in deployments
• Support for additional LTE system features like LAA, NB-IOT, including improved efficiency in parsing of U-plane packets
The first version of M-plane specification provides an open multi-vendor M-plane model for radios based on standardized modern protocols like NETCONF/YANG and includes key capabilities:
• Support for features and capabilities in v1.0 of CUS specification and several enhancements in v2.0 of CUS specification
• Flexible management architecture providing support for traditional hierarchical and hybrid (multiple NETCONF clients or EMS can directly communicate with radio) deployment models
• A comprehensive YANG model developed for 4G & 5G radios building upon industry accepted data models
The xRAN Forum, was established in October 2016 with the mission to enable best-of-breed RRUs and BBUs for a wide range of deployment scenarios, is in the process of merging with the C-RAN Alliance to form the ORAN Alliance, which is backed by AT&T, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO, and Orange.
Interview – Disaggregating and Virtualizing the RAN
The xRAN Forum is a carrier-led initiative aiming to apply the principles of virtualization, openness and standardization to one area of networking that has remained stubbornly closed and proprietary — the radio access network (RAN) and, in particular, the critical segment that connects a base station unit to the antennas. Recently, I sat down with Dr. Sachin Katti, Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments at Stanford…
