OpenRAN Lab: Realizing OpenRAN efficiency and performance with ‘one-test’

Aspire Technology, a leading supplier of end-to-end network performance improvement solutions, together with Mavenir, its anchor OpenRAN supplier and leader in virtualized RAN, announce the launch of their OpenRAN Interoperability & Performance Benchmarking service.

Operators are eager to embrace OpenRAN as it allows the deployment of open market (whitebox) remote radio units (RRUs) to interwork with the virtualized cloud baseband units (vBBU) over ethernet fronthaul (FH), promoting openness and industry collaboration over closed proprietary specifications.

Traditionally, RAN vendors are expected to conduct rigorous testing in cooperation with each of its operator customers prior to the release of products or upgrades to operator’s RAN networks. Each operator conducts its own acceptance testing to validate conformance to specifications. This leads to a huge duplication of effort within the industry and protracted release timelines. With OpenRAN and the introduction of disaggregated multi-vendor environments, the dimensions of this testing challenge begin to multiply. Due to standardization one-stop approvals are now possible for each of the OpenRAN elements.

This new OpenRAN Interoperability & Performance Benchmarking service delivered through the Aspire OpenRAN Lab based in Dublin and being pioneered in conjunction with Mavenir signals a move towards independent testing and benchmarking process prior to operator live field deployment. OpenRAN Interoperability & Performance Benchmarking will encompass all standardized fronthaul specifications (when open) including CPRI, eCPRI, and O-RAN fronthaul as well as functional and non-functional performance testing to ensure end-to-end performance indicators can be achieved in a disaggregated Open RAN scenario.

“This independent benchmarking service shortens the time to market and vastly reduces the global field service resource demands for new OpenRAN vendors such as Mavenir. Meanwhile, operators are assured of the confidence to deploy multi-vendor OpenRAN systems which meet stringent performance requirements in terms of coverage and capacity without incurring the cost and time to perform their own lab-based testing. Furthermore, independent benchmarking can provide confidence in the new products, features or releases at a much earlier point in the commercial process – and even prior to vendor selection and investment/procurement commitment.” Declan Friel, Aspire Technology CTO.

Mavenir Senior VP, Mikael Rylander “This game-changing approach shifts the focus away from bilateral vendor-operator testing and acceptance processes by offering to the industry a truly independent test and benchmarking service. By testing once and then deploying in parallel many times to many different operators, the delays and duplicated efforts of lab-based testing for each operator deployment project is alleviated resulting in significant cost savings and improved time to market”