NI and Spirent Communications have teamed up on what they say is the “first and only” comprehensive test solution for the Open RAN Radio Unit (RU).
The new offering uses application layer testing with “any commercial device” for real-time O-RU validation, the partners said, which speeds up system validation and reduces cost while providing a “real-world environment.”
“Traditional testing of O-RAN systems has been very time-intensive and cost-prohibitive due to its need for engineers to manually test their systems from beginning to end,” the two companies said in a release. The joint solution, they added, includes pre-built test cases and combines Spirent’s software and emulation environment with NI’s instrumentation and “improves time to market with full automation through a single, intuitive GUI while also minimizing instrument cost and footprint.”
Spirent and NI said that the O-RU test solution provides a testbed “capable of running real-world test scenarios in the lab” and supporting interoperability testing by wrapping the O-RU with a real-time Open RAN Distributed Unit (O-DU) emulator, a Centralized Unit (CU) emulator, a core network emulator and a commercial user equipment emulator. Users can also opt to use a commercial device instead of the UE emulator “to validate all timing, full throughput including 4×4 MIMO, and any system-level test that an O-RU
would experience in a real-world deployment scenario to test true performance and interoperability at a functional level,” they added. NI also offers an O-RU test system that uses some of the same capabilities in a production environment, and the two companies noted that being able to use the same test systems in both development and production ties those processes closer together and reduces cost and test time.
This is the latest in a number of collaborations between NI and Spirent, ranging from early testing of 5G New Radio devices to integration of Spirent’s GNSS testing capabilities. Chen Chang, senior director of strategic business development at NI, noted that the two companies have a long history of joint solutions and called the new collab “a critical step in standardizing and accelerating O-RAN O-RU development.”
“This latest solution for the Open RAN space demonstrates how our continued collaboration is addressing critical testing gaps created by disaggregating the RAN that will expand the market by unambiguously validating true multivendor interoperability,” said James Kimery, VP of product management for Lifecycle Service Assurance at Spirent.
