KT Corporation, NTT DOCOMO, INC., Fujitsu Limited, SOLiD, Inc., Keysight Technologies, and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) have conducted an interoperability test using virtualised Open RAN at the 5G Testbed Centre. The test was operated by the Ministry of Science and ICT and National Information Society Agency (NIA), which is responsible for expanding South Korea’s Open RAN ecosystem, in the city of Pangyo in June 2023.
Building on the results, the five companies and organisation participated in the “Global O-RAN PlugFest Spring 2023” event hosted by the O-RAN Alliance. O-RAN PlugFest is a global demonstration event where the openness and interoperability of base station equipment from different manufacturers are tested, and the test results are shared to expand the Open RAN ecosystem.
During the event, the five companies and organisation collaborated to build a virtualised Open RAN base station with multi-vendors and presented various demonstration results aligned with the O-RAN Alliance specifications, such as tests for standard conformance, multi-vendor interoperability, and end-to-end performance.
The demonstration featured the virtualised 5G base station composed of multiple vendors in Korea. The virtualised Distributed Unit (DU) comprised a general server equipped with a hardware accelerator from NVIDIA and Fujitsu software deployed on the virtualisation platform from Wind River. The virtualisation of wireless network equipment is considered a crucial technology for the future development of 6G networks.
The demonstration test was conducted in cooperation with global Open RAN technology companies on the Pangyo 5G Testbed Centre. KT, the host of the event, was in charge of setting up the virtualised Open RAN base station and testing end-to-end performance. DOCOMO and Fujitsu were responsible for testing interoperability using virtualised Open RAN Central unit (CU) and DU equipment. SOLiD and ETRI handled testing interoperability and standard conformance using Open RAN Radio Unit (RU) equipment, respectively. Keysight was in charge of diagnosis monitoring and test automation solutions.
Prior to PlugFest, KT, DOCOMO, Fujitsu and SOLiD conducted a multi-vendor interoperability test using virtualised Open RAN CU/DU and Open RAN RU. The virtualised Open RAN CU and DU were developed as part of the OREX project promoted by DOCOMO and other partners including Fujitsu.
KT will actively contribute to expanding the domestic Open RAN ecosystem by participating in the Open RAN Industry Alliance (ORIA), which is public-private cooperative organisation in South Korea.
Going forward, KT, DOCOMO, Fujitsu and SOLiD plan to expand their collaboration towards the 5G Open RAN ecosystem to promote the introduction of a virtualised Open RAN and RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) to optimise management of radio resources and automated operations.
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