The non-profit R&D powerhouse is going to market with a wideband massive MIMO Open RAN radio unit engineered for densification and defense
When Battelle, a non-profit R&D organization known for bringing breakthrough technologies from lab to market, decided to enter the telecommunications space, they were building a wideband massive MIMO radio, but also leveraging a new path to market in a highly-consolidated space. With the ultra-wideband RavenStar technology, an Open RAN-compliant radio unit designed for the dual demands of mobile network operator-led network densification and the DoD’s push for digital transformation, Battelle is working to push Open RAN from interoperability to innovation.
“We’re looking at telecom problems in a different way than industry does,” said Doug Thornton, Technical Director at Battelle, in an interview with RCR Wireless News. “We looked at some of those features that we were developing for non-commercial applications, and started to talk to [the] commercial industry about how they would be useful…Ultimately that led to the [NTIA-led] Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund grant that we recently received to really accelerate that commercialization process.”
Battelle’s RavenStar massive MIMO RU, is an advanced array technology that uses up to 128 miniature antenna elements. The design offers compactness and flexibility, covering a wide swath of RF spectrum. “We can put a lot of antenna element in a small space and make them wide-band so now you can do multi-band deployments in the same size and physical footprint,” Thornton said. He said to think of the RavenStar radio unit as containing small apertures rather than small resonant antenna elements with electric fields going through the elements instead of around them.
Open RAN is a “technical solution but it provides an industry transformation”
Thornton is clear: “Open RAN…that’s really why we’re here.” For R&D companies entering a new vertical, Open RAN offers interoperability, and legitimacy, in a traditionally closed ecosystem. Open RAN standards provide a framework, interfaces and an ecosystem that smaller companies can use to deliver differentiated hardware emboldened by scenario-specific software.
“It’s a technical solution but it provides an industry transformation,” he said. With the RavenStar massive MIMO RU, Battelle is tapping into a growing shift: operators, governments, and new spectrum owners looking beyond legacy vendors. “There are a lot of spectrum owners right now that aren’t on 3GPP systems. Open RAN is going to open up the market for them.”
The RavenStar array technology is designed for the densification phase of mobile networks, where constraints on space, power, and aesthetics become more pressing. “If you can do the job of multiple radios in one radio… that really matters when you have space limitations or aesthetic limitations,” Thornton said. RavenStar’s RU beamforming and interference-mitigation capabilities shine here and provide a differentiated value proposition, and more advantageous economics, as compared to macrocell-style radios.
This also creates an innovative entry point for Battelle. “We’ve had a lot of success looking into that densification layer, then grow into that macro layer at a later time.”
On the federal side, the RavenStar technology appeals to the DoD’s push for 5G-enabled logistics, data movement, and cost-efficient digital transformation. “They’re a huge logistics entity,” Thornton noted. Battelle’s U.S.-based manufacturing and compliance with military supply chain requirements make it a natural fit for this evolving market.
The active antenna RU has already seen integration and testing with open-source base station software), field experiments in Arizona and Iceland, and upcoming O-RAN integration with major international suppliers. “That’ll get us to those true commercial deployment-type networks,” Thornton explained.
Long-term, the combination of the RavenStar RU’s flexible arrays and the RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) will maximize network performance. “To get the full advantage of a RavenStar unit…tight integration with other network elements is key..” That means software-defined adaptability—from sector coverage to spectral efficiency—delivered via xApps.
“We wouldn’t be here without Open RAN,” Thornton said. With the RavenStar massive MIMO RU, Battelle is betting that the same openness that gave them a way in will give others a way forward.
