Dell Technologies recently announced it is delivering a fully validated solution for Mavenir Open vRAN and VMware Telco Cloud Platform to accelerate the deployment of new open radio access network (RAN) architectures and usher in a new era of 5G growth.
To accommodate the enormous amount of data, and support promising new 5G services, the RAN is undergoing a massive transformation from today’s proprietary, closed RAN systems to an open, standards-based architecture. While the transformation can take different forms, the two common steps in the transformation include:
- Virtualizing the RAN architecture, which includes virtualizing the distributed unit (DU) and centralized unit (CU) functions of the broadband base unit (BBU).
- Standardizing the interfaces between the radio unit RU, DU and CU. Open RAN leverages standard-based interfaces as defined by the O-RAN Alliance and 3GPP.
Virtualizing the RAN architecture allows the decoupling of hardware from software, giving CSPs the flexibility to build RANs using various deployment models based on the performance and total cost of ownership (TCO). This flexibility allows the placement of DU and CU computing resources wherever needed to meet the service requirements of CSP customers. Some potential scenarios include:
- Locating both the DU and CU at the cell site in an entirely distributed model.
- Locating the DU in a fully distributed model at the cell site and centralizing the CU-CP (control plane) and CU-UP (user plane) at the data center.
- Locating the DU in a centralized fashion at the CRAN hub site with the CU even more fully centralized at a data center.
- Locating the DU, CU-CP and CU-UP software in a fully centralized fashion at a data center.
- Locating the DU and CU software in a fully centralized fashion at multiple data centers supporting a single cloud.
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