UAE's Etisalat by e& has completed multiple Cloud RAN (Radio Access Network) trials to improve performance in the 5G ecosystem with ultra-reliable and low-latency communications. In a recent announcement, Etisalat said these trials, conducted for the first time in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, represent a significant advancement in RAN innovation and openness, facilitating interoperation between cellular network equipment provided by different vendors.
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Enhanced 5G Experience
Etisalat has announced the successful completion of the first Cloud RAN trial in the MEA region, collaborating with Nokia and employing In-Line acceleration on Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) ProLiant DL110 Gen11.
According to the official release, the trial aims to enhance the 5G experience for end-users, utilising etisalat by e&'s existing mid-band carrier in the n78 (3.5GHz) band over its 5G standalone network. The technology partners have completed an end-to-end Cloud RAN L3 data call, showcasing the Cloud RAN solution using the In-Line accelerator architecture.
"The trial saw Nokia's virtualised Distributed Unit (vDU) and virtualised Centralised Unit (vCU) on the HPE ProLiant DL110 Gen11 server utilising In-Line acceleration that provides unique benefits in terms of power efficiency, scalability, flexibility, feature parity, cloud nativeness, lower TCO as well as ease of integration into any server and cloud environment," said the official release.
"We are excited to announce our successful proof of concepts of Cloud RAN solutions. This is a great milestone in the journey of innovation within our industry to leverage the inter-operability and tailored nature of Cloud RAN, Etisalat by e& said. "The Cloud RAN solution will allow us to further innovate our services to expand into different real time applications and provide the best solutions with high speeds and lower latencies."
Cloud Benefits
Cloud RAN, a new radio access technology based on centralised cloud computing, offers network operators and end-users the flexibility of deploying RAN on the same infrastructure used for other cloud-based applications.
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Cloud RAN facilitates the use of open and interoperable RAN interfaces, along with a cloud-based software solution for the baseband computing system. The baseband computing functionality is divided into the Distributed Unit (DU) and the Centralised Unit (CU), both fully cloud-native, enabling the use of "Commercial-off-the-Shelf" (COTS) servers.
Additionally, Etisalat by e& has successfully tested and verified Hardware Acceleration Technology in CloudRAN, specifically focusing on lookaside and in-line acceleration for the L1 physical layer processing.
