The partners said they had also participated in the O-RAN Alliance’s global plugfest for spring 2023
Asian companies KT, NTT Docomo and Fujitsu, together with SOLiD, Keysight Technologies and Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), said they have successfully conducted an interoperability test using virtualized Open RAN (O-RAN) in South Korea.
In a release, the partners said that the test was performed earlier this month at the 5G Testbed Center, operated by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency (NIA) in the city of Pangyo, South Korea.
The five companies and ETRI also said they had participated in the O-RAN plugfest for spring 2023, which was 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 O-RAN ecosystem.
During the event, the five companies and ETRI collaborated to build a virtualized O-RAN base station with multi-vendors and also unveiled a number of demonstration results aligned with the O-RAN Alliance specifications, such as tests for standard conformance, multi-vendor interoperability and end-to-end performance.
The partners also highlighted that the demonstration featured what they claim to be the first virtualized 5G base station composed of multiple vendors in South Korea. The virtualized Distributed Unit (DU) comprised a general server equipped with a hardware accelerator from NVIDIA and Fujitsu software deployed on the virtualization platform from Wind River.
Korean carrier KT was in charge of setting up the virtualized O-RAN base station and testing end-to-end performance, while Docomo and Fujitsu were responsible for testing interoperability using virtualized Open RAN Central unit (CU) and DU equipment. SOLiD and ETRI handled testing interoperability and standard conformance using O-RAN Radio Unit (RU) equipment, respectively. Keysight was in charge of diagnosis monitoring and test automation solutions.
“KT will actively contribute to expanding the domestic O-RAN ecosystem by participating in the Open RAN Industry Alliance, which is public-private cooperative organization in South Korea,” the release said.
“Going forward, KT, Docomo, Fujitsu and SOLiD plan to expand their collaboration towards the 5G Open RAN ecosystem to promote the introduction of a virtualized Open RAN and RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) to optimize management of radio resources and automated operations,” it added.
The O-RAN Global PlugFest Spring 2023 was conducted from April to June 2 in ten labs across Asia, Europe and North America, with 60 participating companies or institutions, according to O-RAN Alliance.
