Nokia said that its next-generation 5G AirScale Cloud RAN platform based on vRAN2.0 will be commercially available in 2020 with general availability expected in 2021, following a series of successful trials. Nokia’s first generation 5G AirScale Cloud RAN based on vRAN1.0, which has a virtualised Central Unit, has been in commercial operation on a mmWave network in the US since early 2019.
Nokia’s new vRAN2.0 platform introduces a virtualised 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 platform helps operators to generate revenue from new 5G services as well as to enable flexible network slicing, meet IoT requirements and bring the overall benefits of cloud computing to radio access networks, Nokia said.
The first Nokia 5G AirScale Cloud RAN platform with a vCU in vRAN1.0 configuration was taken into large-scale commercial use in the US in 2019. Since then, Nokia said it evolved the platform to vRAN2.0 configuration with a Distributed Unit running on General Purpose Processor (x86)-based computing with hardware acceleration in Layer 1.Nokia has now successfully completed 5G data calls in a full system consisting of Nokia Cloud Packet Core, Nokia 5G AirScale Cloud RAN in vRAN2.0 configuration with full baseband in the cloud, Nokia Fronthaul Gateway, and a commercial 5G device. Both real-time and non-real-time sensitive baseband computing across vDU and vCU ran in x86-based Nokia AirFrame Open Edge Servers and Nokia AirFrame Rackmount Servers. Standard off-the-shelf Intel Vista Creek hardware acceleration was used for specific parts of the real-time, sensitive L1 computing in the vDU. This helps to boost the performance even further without impacting the fully cloud-based implementation.
Since 2018, Nokia Bell Labs has been working on the potential of using graphics processing units for hardware acceleration, and Nokia expects these ‘vRAN3.0’ products to become mature in 2022.
Nokia’s 5G AirScale Cloud RAN platform is also specifically designed to reuse existing network assets. For example, Nokia’s Fronthaul Gateway platform offers an evolution path for operators to upgrade existing CPRI-based radios to eCPRI-based AirScale 5G Cloud RAN. It can run as a standalone unit or fully integrated with the vDU on an optimised Nokia AirFrame Open Edge Server.
The 5G AirScale Cloud RAN platform supports all architecture options, offering mobile and converged operators with a choice of RAN deployments: vDU and vCU can be co-located at a central or regional edge cloud; the vDU can be decentralised to an edge or far edge cloud, or the vDU can be located even at the cell site. Nokia’s 5G AirScale Cloud RAN software runs both on top of Nokia CloudBand and third-party cloud infrastructure software stacks to provide maximum flexibility.
Nokia 5G AirScale Cloud RAN has been architected for Open RAN (O-RAN) standards, splitting the base station into Radio Unit (RU), Distributed Unit (DU), Radio Access Point (RAP, combination of RU and DU), Centralized Unit (CU), and O-RAN compliant interfaces between these elements. It also includes the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) concept to take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning functionalities to optimise the radio and system performance.
