By Juan Pedro Tomás
Japanese companies NEC and Fujitsu have begun developing technologies for interoperability testing between 5G base station equipment conforming to O-RAN specifications at NEC’s UK laboratories and Fujitsu’s US laboratories.
Both companies are expected to build a verification environment using these technologies in their respective laboratories, starting this month, and begin interoperability testing.
The partners noted that this initiative will be implemented as part of the “Post 5G Infrastructure Enhancement R&D Project” under the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Japan.
Through this initiative, NEC, Fujitsu, and NEDO will accelerate the global reach of base station equipment that conforms to O-RAN specifications.
“In recent years, base station equipment has become more open due to O-RAN fronthaul interface specifications formulated by the O-RAN Alliance , and it is becoming possible to connect to RUs (radio units) and CUs / DUs (central units / distributed units) from a variety of vendors. However, in order to quickly verify interoperability between different vendors’ equipment, it is necessary to establish a verification process, develop tools that can be used in common, and to develop a verification environment,” NEC said in a release. “Under these circumstances, NEDO commissioned NEC and Fujitsu to conduct R&D on assessment and verification technologies for interoperability between base station equipment in the “Post 5G Infrastructure Enhancement R&D Project. In response, NEC and Fujitsu are building an environment and developing technologies to assess and verify the interoperability of different vendors’ equipment and the impact of such connections on the entire network.”
NEC also highlighted that it is conducting trials at its Open RAN laboratory in NEC Europe, London, UK, while Fujitsu is doing so at its laboratory hosted at Fujitsu Network Communications, a Fujitsu group company in the United States.
The two companies will develop technologies to verify the interoperability of various vendors’ equipment for O-RAN fronthaul. In this specific project, NEC’s lab in the UK and Fujitsu’s lab in the US will make it possible to implement a Conformance Test System that can perform standard tests in accordance with O-RAN specifications and to implement an End-to-End (E2E) Test System that can verify the connection from the core network to the terminal.
The two companies will collaborate with carriers, equipment vendors, and governments in various countries and regions, aiming to significantly reduce the time required to conduct interoperability testing for base station equipment.
