SKT says it has improved the power consumption and processing capacity of virtual base stations
Korea’s SK Telecom (SKT) is claiming advancements in the power consumption and processing capacity for Open RAN virtual base stations, resulting from its work with several industry partners including Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia and Intel.
The carrier’s interconnection tests were performed using virtual base station equipped with a built-in accelerator. One test was conducted with Ericsson and Samsung, and another was conducted with Nokia. Intel partnered with SKT on an AI-based virtual base station, which the carrier said will enable the ability to predict traffic patterns and efficiently control the on/off operation of each CPU core of the virtual base station server, resulting in a reductino of more than 20% in power consumption.
According to SKT, capacity gains and power usage reduction are the primary technical challenges when it coeds to transitioning to Open RAN virtual base stations.
“This is a meaningful research and development (R&D) achievement that improved both the power consumption and processing capacity, which are important in open LAN virtual base stations,” said Ryu Tak-gi, who oversees SKT infrastructure technology. “The company believes that the virtual base station will become the baseline for advancement of 5G and 6G networks and will continue to make headways in research and development.”
Last year, SKT and Nokia demonstrated the process of virtualizing the baseband based on Nokia’s design, including its comprehensive infrastructure solutions such as NADCM (Nokia AirFrame Data Center Manager), separating hardware and software, and operating each independently. In particular, the pair tested the network flexibility and performance at the same time by dividing the infrastructure into two separate functions: a cloudified virtual distributed unit (vDU) and a virtual central unit (vCU). At the time, both companies stated the the trial confirmed the agile response of 5G vRAN to computing requirements such as high performance, large capacity and the possibility of rapidly launching new services.
