Industrial Automation Magazine India

The company contributed its TeraVM RIC Test and TM500 Network Tester to multiple demonstrations.

Bangalore, April 2024 – Viavi Solutions announced recently that it has participated in the 2024 RIC Forum, March 26-28, in Dallas, Texas. The company contributed its TeraVM RIC Test and TM500 Network Tester to multiple demonstrations, building on collaborations at MWC 2024, where the company partnered with industry leaders to showcase RIC test and app training.

VIAVI products were used to validate RIC performance and train xApps and rApps in the following sessions:

·Live app demonstration by Telecom Infra Project – Telecom Infra Project (TIP) presented an mMIMO Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) configuration xApp by Amdocs, showing predicted traffic and user locations and configuring SSB beams to provide coverage of these areas.

·Live app demonstration by Capgemini – Capgemini Engineering presented energy-saving xApps and rApps for networks of different types, such as backpack RAN, mobile RAN, pole-mounted RAN and others using the TM500 for UE emulation.

·Lightning Talk / recorded demonstration by ONF – ONF demonstrated a unified implementation of an energy-saving rApp and a traffic steering xApp and how they can be well coordinated under the O-RAN architecture to conserve energy while maintaining quality of service in a closed control loop setup. The demo also compared various AI/ML model based approaches, with models trained on actual network data from a major mobile operator.

·Live app demonstration by Accelleran – Accelleran demonstrated use of the dRAX RIC and x/rApp SDK to implement an energy-saving algorithm. RAN data is gathered to create an insight into the network. The energy-saving algorithm decided when a 5G cell can be turned off or turned back on to save energy, while at the same time conserving the QoS of the UEs.

At MWC Barcelona, TeraVM RIC Test supported demonstrations by Aira Technologies, VMware by Broadcom, Rakuten Symphony, Samsung and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

"As a proud recipient of NTIA funding for our VALOR lab, VIAVI is pleased to see the U.S. government continue to sponsor opportunities for innovation in Open RAN," said Dr Ian Wong, Director of RF and Wireless Architecture at VIAVI, and Co-Chair of the Test and Integration Focus Group at O-RAN ALLIANCE. "The RIC is a game changer in intelligent network optimisation and automation, and it is essential to develop robust and comprehensive AI training to maximise effectiveness of xApps and rApps."

The RIC Forum, hosted by the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration Institute for Telecommunications Sciences, in collaboration with the US Department of Defense FutureG Office, brought together vendors of RAN Intelligent Controllers (RIC) and applications to demonstrate progress and innovation in the ecosystem.