Rakuten Mobile said it plans to introduce this technology for commercial 5G SA mobile networks in the future
Rakuten Mobile and Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) have completed a research and development project aimed at the commercial deployment of fully virtualized 5G Standalone (SA) mobile network radio access network equipment using general-purpose hardware and cloud technology.
As part of the research and development project, Rakuten Mobile utilized virtualization technology to deploy 5G SA and radio access network (RAN) slicing, as well as performance improvement and extension of network functionality. Specifically, the Japanese telco completed an end-to-end connection test for 5G SA basic functions using wireless access equipment with virtualization technology. As a result, the company enabled communication on a fully virtualized 5G SA network from RAN to core network, using 5G SA supported devices and Rakuten Mobile’s 5G SA network.
The operator also noted that the esults of the research and development project also confirmed that Capex and Opex could be reduced by 30% or more compared to conventional mobile networks requiring dedicated hardware and software.
Rakuten Mobile said it plans to introduce this technology for commercial 5G SA mobile networks in the future, and through its Rakuten Symphony subsidiary, the company aims to accelerate the global deployment of virtualized 5G SA mobile network platforms developed in Japan.
Rakuten Mobile said that the results of the project confirmed that more than three times the number of connected devices could be supported compared to Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks by managing the overheads caused by cloud platforms and software processing.
“For base station distributed unit and radio unit support expansion, cloud resources were successfully reduced by expanding the number of cells per virtualized Central Unit (vCU) up to 256 cells, enabling more than three times the number of connected devices compared with LTE networks,” Rakuten Mobile said.
“The introduction of these research results into commercial 5G SA mobile networks will reduce development and operating costs and enable flexible responses to advanced network quality requirements across various services utilizing 5G networks. This is expected to contribute not only to current applications such as voice calling and internet browsing but also to improved convenience in daily life and business,” the telco added.
Rakuten Mobile also highlighted it will continue to promote the development of 5G networks using fully virtualized general-purpose hardware.
Rakuten Mobile recently announced plans to conduct R&D on RAN intelligent controllers (RICs) at Japan’s Yokosuka Telecom Research Park to advance the development of open telecom technologies.
The facility — which is set up with Rakuten Mobile’s fully virtualized cloud-native mobile network — will be used to verify improvements in network efficiency, power saving and security enhancements, according to the company. The facility will provide equipment manufacturers from around the world remote access to verify open RAN integration and conduct RIC proof-of-concept testing. Further, because the facility’s Open RAN integration emulator software runs on a general-purpose server, other research facilities worldwide will be able to access it.
Rakuten Mobile said it will share what information it gathers from its testing with the O-RAN Alliance and the Open Test and Integration Centre (OTIC) in Japan.
