Accelerating the Rise of 5G New Radio, Radisys and Qualcomm Partner

The next generation of mobile internet connectivity is here. 5G network infrastructure offers faster speeds, lower latency, improved reliability and better capacity than the versions that came before.

The networks have high expectations and have the potential to help power the massive rise in the Internet of Things (IoT) due to the infrastructure required to carry the enormous amounts of data needed to evolve our world into a smarter and more connected place.

5G networks are expected to be launched globally by 2020, which will work in conjunction with existing 3G and 4G technology to be able to deliver accelerated connections that will keep people online, regardless of location.

5G NR
“5G New Radio (NR) is a global standard for a unified, more capable 5G wireless air interface,” according to Qualcomm, which claims their R&D team have found new ways to present “faster and more responsive mobile broadband experiences and extend mobile technology to connect and redefine a multitude of new industries.”

Today, at Mobile World Congress Americas in Los Angeles, Oregon-based Radisys Corporation, a global leader of open telecom solutions, announced that they have partnered with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc to become a critical, independent software vendor to optimize L2-L3 5G NR software on the Qualcomm FSM 5G Platform (FSM 100xx).

Radisys’ open architecture business models allow service providers to drive disruption with their innovative integrated and virtualized enabling technology solutions use open reference architectures and standards, combined with open hardware and software to enable business transformation for the telecoms industry, and its services organization allows for systems integration expertise needed to solve complex deployment challenges faced by communications and content providers.

“Qualcomm Technologies is very happy to be building on a longstanding and fruitful relationship with Radisys on LTE/LTE-Advanced to support critical infrastructure for the 5G era, supporting a multitude of spectrum types and use cases,” said Rahul Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity and Networking, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “This engagement is an important milestone for the industry, and we expect it to result in critical 5G NR small cell infrastructure, benefiting 5G subscribers around the globe.”

Their combined goal is to deliver a complete, pre-integrated, pre-tested, and pre-validated 5G platform for both Millimeter Wave (mmWave) and sub-6 GHz bands. Together they are helping service providers to speed up their 5G deployments for multiple vertical industries as well as time-to-revenue.

“We have been working closely with Qualcomm Technologies for many years, and we are very pleased to continue this commitment to partnership in the 5G era that will enable connectivity like we’ve never seen before,” said Neeraj Patel, senior vice president, and general manager, Software and Services, Radisys. “Working together, we are helping to ensure that our customers have an integrated and validated 5G NR platform that will enable them to accelerate their own product development for a variety of use cases and vertical markets. Our solution will equate to faster innovation, faster time to market, and faster time to revenue.”

Benefits

Qualcomm Technologies 5G platform, combined with Radisys’ 5G software, is aligned to give a boost of energy to the growth of 5G NR small cells. Small cell solutions are designed by Qualcomm to improve mobile coverage and increase network capacity. These ‘cells’ can be deployed in both indoor and outdoor environments in residential areas and enterprises to improve network coverage, performance, and power efficiency. This, in turn, will support communication service providers to implement 5G coverage and capacity and support new use cases for high-throughput applications, which include augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and enhanced mobile broadband.

The Radisys and Qualcomm partnership will also allow new use case support for enterprises to deploy their own private 5G networks in varied areas such as mining, oil rigs, campus-wide locations, for stadium owners to add 5G coverage capacity for thousands of subscribers, and for service providers to enhance indoor coverage while supporting improved coverage in highly urban areas.

The enhanced solution will leverage Radisys’ 5G NR mmWave Non-standalone (NSA) and Standalone (SA) mode on the Qualcomm FSM100xx mmWave SOC. Supporting both FDD and TDD deployments, first targeting the mmWave spectrum (high-band FR2) to work with applications that require very high bandwidth.

Radisys’ experience as a leader in developing the 5G ecosystem and their active role in the Small Cell Forum (SCF), the O-RAN Alliance, and the Telecom Infra Project will play a significant role in driving 5G connectivity across a wide variety of devices from a multi-vendor ecosystem standpoint due to their development of the 5G FAPI specification for 5G PHY APIs, defining the standard open interfaces for open small cell architecture, a first for 5G.

Juhi Fadia is an engineer, analyst, researcher and writer covering advanced and emerging technologies.

Edited by Maurice Nagle