Viavi claims industry first for RedCap performance validation
Viavi Solutions has debuted what it says is the industry’s first 5G Reduced Capability (RedCap) device emulation for 5G network testing.
The solution leverages Viavi’s TM500 network testing platform, which the company says is already used by most network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to test base station performance.
RedCap (also sometimes referred to NR-Light) was introduced in Release 17 as a provision for IoT devices to connect to 5G with significantly reduced network—and therefore hardware, and therefore cost-linked—capabilities. The specification sits provisionally between mMTC and eMBB in the 5G NR power hierarchy (a more detailed analysis of 5G RedCap is here). Viavi describes RedCap as designed to serve “mid-tier IoT devices” with “average speed and latency requirements”: Less intense demands than Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC), but which require more than Low-Power Wide-Area (LPWA) can provide.
RedCap is expected to be commercially available in networks sometime in 2024, and development is ramping up accordingly (but will RedCap come too late?). Qualcomm announced its first RedCap chipset in February, with that chipset expected to be in commercial mobile devices by the first half of 2024. Qualcomm has said that its chipset can enable peak data rates of up to 220 Mbps.
Analyst firm Berg Insight has said that 5G is starting to replace high-speed LTE variants across product categories like connected cars, CPEs and IoT gateways, and that “5G RedCap chipsets are less complex and expensive compared to 5G eMBB-capable chipsets and will function as a replacement for LTE Cat-4 and LTE Cat-6 chipsets, supporting use cases with requirements for lower data rates below 300 Mbps.” The firm believes that “uptake of the technology will be small in the short-term due to the price gap and limited number of chipset providers as well as the requirement for 5G SA network coverage. Nevertheless, early 5G RedCap adopters will likely be providers of high-end IoT devices like wearables, telematics gateways, industrial meters and alarm panels.”
Viavi says that its RedCap device emulation fills a “significant gap” in available testing capabilities, with the ability for NEMs to create realistic scenarios involving thousands of active devices and “simulate RedCap-like traffic patterns, generate RedCap-specific signaling, and evaluate the network’s performance for RedCap use cases.” The vendor also noted that because the RedCap emulation capability uses the TM500, it’s able to re-use existing and well-established channel fading models for accurate simulation and examining RedCap device performance in challenging propagation environments.
“5G deployment may be stabilizing globally, but industrial and private networks are just getting started,” said Ian Langley, SVP of Viavi’s wireless susiness unit. “RedCap specifications provide the missing link for the class of devices used in such applications, so equipment manufacturers and operators can pursue development and deployment with confidence. The TM500 adds essential validation capabilities with device emulation, further accelerating RedCap adoption.”
