Open RAN Pre-Certification Testbeds:
VIAVI Solutions Inc. (VIAVI) has partnered with network synchronization and emulation specialist Calnex Solutions plc to provide a suite of test solutions for the comprehensive testing of Open RAN products across the protocol, signal and timing domains. These testbeds simplify and reduce the cost of developing in-house Open RAN testing for pre-certification validation and can be set up immediately with no debugging.
The shift to Open RAN and AI-RAN in 5G and 6G systems is opening the telecom infrastructure market to a greater number of companies, including startups and university spinouts. While this has the potential to accelerate innovation, multivendor ecosystems require strict adherence to performance, security, interoperability and reliability standards. Although final O-RAN ALLIANCE and 3GPP certification takes place at official labs, pre-testing is essential to ensure success and avoid the costs of failing.
Through the VIAVI and Calnex partnership, manufacturers of O-RU, O-DU and O-CU equipment can access three testbeds immediately:
- an end-to-end and cybersecurity test solution for fronthaul and midhaul;
- an O-RU and O-DU test solution with S-plane testing; and
- core network emulation test bundles for the backhaul.
Additional testbeds are in development.
The joint solutions leverage VIAVI’s TM500 and XEdge test platforms for emulated and real user equipment scenarios, as well as its TeraVM network traffic generator. The comprehensive testing capabilities are then completed via specialist hardware from Calnex, notably its Paragon-neo for O-RU and O-DU synchronization, SNE-Ignite for fronthaul and midhaul impairment emulation and SNE-X for core network emulation.
“During the development phase, many O-RUs are only tested with a single O-DU/O-CU vendor, which results in failure under real-world network conditions. This issue is compounded as the industry lacks tools to emulate realistic fronthaul conditions,” said Ian Langley, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Business Unit, VIAVI. “Our partnership with Calnex puts these tools directly into the developers’ hands to vastly speed and simplify Open RAN test lab setup.”
“Companies urgently need in-house labs to validate their Open RAN systems, but establishing them has traditionally required equipment from multiple vendors and can take several months of debugging to ensure interoperability,” said Tommy Cook, CEO, Calnex. “VIAVI and Calnex’s offerings are highly complementary, and we’ve undertaken the complex integration work to create these first-of-their-kind comprehensive testing systems and eliminate the issues that have plagued many developers.”
The integrated systems from VIAVI and Calnex allow for full O-RAN and 3GPP conformance testing including key WG4, WG5 and TIFG specifications, while also emulating realistic network impairments like jitter and delay. This enables the rigorous testing of key functions like S-plane resilience and advanced scenarios such as multi-cell handovers, and is supported by powerful root-cause debugging and cybersecurity vulnerability testing across all O-RAN components.
For more information, visit VIAVI and Calnex.
