Nokia has unveiled its new ReefShark chipsets, aimed at providing big performance gains in 5G network with a small size, cost and power consumption. The company also outlined the scope of its Future X architecture for 5G, the basis for its new reference silicon design and foundation of its 5G technology and services portfolio, to be showcased at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.
The ReefShark chipsets for compute capacity are delivered as plug-in units for the commercially available Nokia AirScale baseband module. AirScale is software upgradeable to full 5G functionality: the plug-in units will enable it to triple throughput from 28 Gbps, to up to 84 Gbps per module. AirScale baseband module chaining supports base station throughputs of up to 6 terabits per second, to meet the growing demands of people and devices in megacities. With the higher performance, the size of massive MIMO antennas can be halved. Nokia said the chipsets also reduce power consumption in basebrand units by 64 percent, compared to similar units in use today.
Nokia is working with 30 operators using ReefShark and will ramp up field deployments during the third quarter of this year. Shipping in volume will take place in that quarter. The ReefShark chipsets come with ReefShark Digital Front End for LTE and 5G radio systems supporting massive MIMO, ReefShark RFIC front-end module and transceiver, or a massive MIMO Adaptive Antenna system, and a ReefShark Baseband Processor.
Nokia’s Future X architecture of 5G portfolio includes a full, end-to-end network that delivers up to three times more data capacity per cell site and 30 percent lower total cost of operation –according to Nokia Bell Labs- through artificial intelligence (AI) based automation. The baseband performance comes on the back of the new ReefShark chipset. Machine Learning-enabled beamforming technologies will also allow networks to 'follow' mobile devices and extend cell range as well as provide massive capacity wherever it is needed.
The 5G Future X network will scale efficiently to cope with the traffic and constant creation of new services and applications assigned to network 'slices', Nokia said. Nokia 5G core systems, such as Cloud Packet Core, combine cloud-native architecture concepts such as network function software disaggregation, stateless functional software elements with 'state-efficient' processing and a shared data layer, with automated cloud networking and dynamic lifecycle management.
