Evidence that not all Open RAN innovation is about breaking into major brownfield macro contracts comes with the news that Irish company Software Radio Systems has integrated and tested its private-network focussed Open RAN software stack with nine Open RAN Radio Units (O-RUs) from six developers.
The company last week took the wraps off its srsRAN Enterprise 5G, which it described as “a portable, scalable, full-stack CU+DU software solution for streamlined private network deployments”.
That product was developed in-house at SRS, with no third-party components, and includes features such as RAN slicing with dynamic and static Physical Resource Blocks (PRB) assignment, 5G New Radio (NR) Positioning, and capabilities for 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) with 3GPP Release 17-based support of both GEO and LEO satellites
Paul Sutton, CEO at SRS commented: “The way we build mobile networks is changing. By harnessing the opportunity that Open RAN presents, we can build networks in a different way. This is as true for new enterprise private 5G networks as it is for the continent-wide networks SRS software is already running. The new srsRAN Enterprise 5G software stack is a game-changer, enabling customers to deploy powerful, flexible, cost-effective private network solutions using off-the-shelf hardware and open interfaces, and even customising to meet their specific needs.”
SRS said the solution is portable across architectures including Intel (Xeon, Core), AMD (Ryzen, Epyc), ARM (Ampere Altra), AWS Graviton, Nvidia Grace and NXP Layerscape.
Comprising a complete CU and DU solution scalable from embedded to the cloud. The solution Enterprise 5G scales up to 12x 100MHz 4T4R cells on AMD EPYC 8004 or Ampere Altra Q80-28 (18Gbps DL, 1.2Gbps UL) and scales down to 1x 100MHz 4T4R on NXP LX2160A.
The company said deployment options include vRAN on any Linux OS, CloudRAN as a CNF with Kubernetes/Helm support, in small cells with L1 SoCs supported via FAPI interface, for acceleration with optional ACC100 and vRAN Boost integration, in Radios with fronthaul split-8 and O-RAN split 7.2, and at the Baseband with deployment on Intel/AMD/ARM hardware.
It supports split 7.2 O-RUs, with solutions from six vendors having already been integrated and tested.
Those vendors are Benetel, Foxconn, Picocom, Liteon, VVDN and AMD.
SRS’ Sutton said that being able to activate high performance solutions for private networks will deliver on one of Open RAN’s promises – the ability to deliver best-in-class equipment.
“Each vendor brings unique capabilities, enabling customers to deploy 5G solutions tailored to their needs, from indoor private networks to large-scale outdoor deployments. We are delighted to have demonstrated srsRAN’s flexibility by integrating with some of the industry’s leading O-RUs to deliver a range of deployment-ready solutions for 5G Open RAN.”
The RUs with which SRS has integrated are:
- Benetel: RAN 650 (Outdoor) & RAN 550 (Indoor) – Deployed in live networks
- Foxconn: RPQN-4800E & RPQN-7801 (Indoor) – Deployed in live networks
- Picocom (Previously announced): PC802 SCB & PC805 RDB – PC802 SCB Deployed in live networks
- Liteon: FlexFI (Indoor) – Deployed in live networks
- VVDN: LPRU (Indoor) – Integration complete, not yet deployed in live networks
- AMD: ZCU670 – Integration complete
SRS was founded in Ireland 2014 by Dublin University post-doctorates Paul Sutton and Ismael Gomez Miguelez. It has further operations in Germany and Spain.
