Nokia confirmed plans to commercially launch a version of its 5G AirScale Cloud RAN solution that is based on vRAN2.0. The open version will be commercially available this year with general availability expected in 2021.
Open RAN (O-RAN) splits the base station into Radio Unit (RU), Distributed Unit (DU), Radio Access Point (RAP, a combination of RU and DU), Centralized Unit (CU), and O-RAN compliant interfaces between these elements. Nokia’s 5G AirScale Cloud RAN also includes the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) concept to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to optimize the radio and system performance.
Nokia’s first-generation 5G AirScale Cloud RAN based on vRAN1.0, which has a virtualized Central Unit (vCU), has been in commercial operation on a mmWave network in the U.S. since early 2019.
Nokia’s new vRAN2.0 solution introduces a virtualized Distributed Unit (vDU) as well as a Fronthaul Gateway. The result is a fully cloudified and disaggregated 5G base station that provides scalability, low latency, high performance and capacity, as well as several network architecture options, to meet ever-increasing market demands. The solution helps operators to generate revenue from new 5G services as well as to enable flexible end-to-end network slicing, meet IoT requirements and bring the overall benefits of cloud computing to Radio Access Networks (RAN).
The first Nokia 5G AirScale Cloud RAN solution with a vCU in vRAN1.0 configuration was taken into large-scale commercial use in the U.S. in 2019. Since then, Nokia has evolved the solution to vRAN2.0 configuration with a Distributed Unit (DU) running on General Purpose Processor (x86)-based computing with hardware acceleration in Layer 1 (L1).
Tommi Uitto, President of Mobile Networks at Nokia, said: “The next-generation Nokia 5G AirScale Cloud RAN is a true innovation that will transform mobile networks and provide operators with the flexibility they need to meet the customer demands in the evolving 5G era. Its flexible architecture offers speed, coverage, capacity and low latency as well as the opportunity to generate revenues immediately.”
