The development of Open RAN is accelerating, and the 5G market is about to change

Base stations are one of the key infrastructures to advance 5G development. During the evolution from 4G to 5G, a technology called Open Radio Access Network (ie Open RAN) emerged in the industry.

The core of Open RAN is that telecom operators can mix equipment and technologies from different suppliers to deploy mobile networks, aiming to reduce the cost of 5G base station construction. The Open RAN Coalition is one of the organizations promoting the development of this technology. Last year, Xilinx announced its participation in the Open RAN Policy Coalition, which is committed to providing strong support for the development and deployment of Open RAN 5G technology.

Not long ago, Xilinx announced the launch of the Open RAN Massive MIMO product portfolio together with Mavenir to accelerate the development of the Open RAN ecosystem.

Open RAN market accelerates

Judging from the current market situation, major European telecom operators are actively deploying Open RAN. According to a survey of operators conducted by Deloitte in mid-2020, most operators believe that the practical application of 5G Open RAN will appear within two years.

Dimitris Mavrakis, senior research director of 5G at ABI Research, also said: “The 5G Open RAN market is booming. According to ABI Research, network vendor spending will reach $10 billion by 2026-2027, and will reach $30 billion by 2030. The dollar amount goes beyond traditional RAN.”

However, in terms of actual development, Open RAN is still in the experimental stage, and most regions hope to open the door to Open RAN in infrastructure construction by taking rural areas as a breakthrough.

As a member of Open RAN, in Xilinx’s view, the market size of Open RAN is not large, but it is a very fast-growing market. Gilles Garcia, senior business director of Xilinx’s Wired and Wireless Group, said: “The world will accelerate the large-scale deployment of Open RAN in the middle of next year. So we are also now taking advantage of such an experimental stage and mature radio and software in the market. , to accelerate the deployment of the entire Open RAN globally.”

Gilles Garcia, Senior Business Director, Wired and Wireless Group, Xilinx

　What is missing from the Open RAN market development

Xilinx has the most comprehensive set of devices and platforms required in today’s 5G radio, fronthaul and hardware acceleration solutions market, so the deployment of Open RAN 5G infrastructure represents a significant opportunity for Xilinx.

In Xilinx’s view, Open RAN is a very attractive high-growth market area, and the market is also calling for massive MIMO solutions, but in terms of the current market conditions, the Open RAN field does not have a real high-end market. s solution.

“A truly high-end solution is a combination of efficiency and performance,” adds Gilles Garcia. “By high performance, we mean instantaneous bandwidths of up to 400 megahertz, while also balancing energy efficiency and output power.”

In response to this market demand, Xilinx and Mavenir have jointly introduced a unified 4G/5G O-RAN Massive MIMO (mMIMO) product portfolio to the market.

According to the company, the two companies worked together to successfully complete the end-to-end integration of the first-generation mMIMO solution using Open RAN principles. The integration work took place at Mavenir’s labs in Bangalore, India. The integration covers multiple deployment scenarios and was evaluated by six CSPs, all of which are top global operators. Mavenir provides virtualized radio access network (vRAN) support for mMIMO, including core network, CU and DU. Among them, Xilinx provides a Class B O-RAN radio unit.

Gilles Garcia said: “The Open RAN market is highly dependent on innovation, and innovation is needed to drive development at all levels. As a strategic partner of Xilinx, Mavenir has adopted Xilinx in more than 80% of the Open RAN radios it touches. Si’s technologies, including RFSoC DFE and Versal AI. Based on this, the two parties have collaborated to create a highly competitive Massive MIMO radio.”

Judging from the strategic cooperation between Xilinx and Mavenir, the end-to-end integrated solution launched this time will start from the C-band and enter the market. Gilles Garcia believes that the North American market is releasing the opportunity to deploy Open RAN in the C-band, and this opportunity will be further released in the second half of this year. Xilinx believes that this area has the greatest demand for massive MIMO, Open RAN, radio, especially high-end massive MIMO. So, Xilinx chose to start shipping their products in the C-band first.

　　Opportunities in the Open RAN market

According to Xilinx’s deployment of end-to-end integrated solutions for Open RAN, the two parties are jointly developing next-generation mMIMO products, which will be the world’s first O-RAN compliant 64TRX mMIMO products capable of supporting O-RAN in a compact form factor. Instantaneous bandwidth up to 400MHz. Mavenir’s vRAN software products support up to 16 layers of multi-user MIMO, advanced receiver algorithms, and fully digital beamforming. All functions run on Mavenir’s open and flexible cloud-native platform and other cloud platforms.

It is understood that these products will utilize Xilinx technology platforms such as RFSoC DFE and Versal AI to achieve advanced beamforming, thereby providing a fully integrated hardware and software mMIMO solution compliant with the O-RAN specification.

“Unified Massive MIMO Open RAN Radio Portfolio Combining Active Hardware and Software Integration and Verification, and Accelerating Radio Integration and Verification,” said Gilles Garcia: “First Open RAN Massive MIMO Radio Lab in 2021 Ready in early Q4 to meet operators’ high-end Massive MIMO requirements.”

The Xilinx-Mavenir partnership is significant for the Open RAN market. In terms of the industry positions of both parties, Xilinx is the leader in 5G radio technology, and Mavenir is the only end-to-end cloud-native network software provider in the industry. Because the original intention of Open RAN is to hope that the radio can cooperate with the software of various suppliers, and these software also need to support different suppliers, and this strategic cooperation can provide a good choice for the Open RAN market.

According to Gilles Garcia, at present, Xilinx and Mavenir have launched the world’s first 64TRX mMIMO product that complies with the O-RAN specification, and the two will release 32T and 32R related products in the future.

Finally, Gilles Garcia said that Open RAN will not replace the traditional RAN market, and the two will coexist for a long time. At the same time, he also pointed out that Open RAN is a very rapidly growing market, and this market is still expanding. This change has brought new vitality to the 5G market and new opportunities for semiconductor manufacturers.