5G infrastructure requires chips!

5G cannot take off without critical infrastructure, and it’s no secret that the mainstream suppliers of that infrastructure are politically unpopular these days.

Do we have any other options?

Even before politics took hold, network operators were looking for better solutions. The classic radio access network (RAN) – the radio equipment and a lot of baseband electronics at the bottom of each base station, connected to the main station via backhaul – is already difficult to scale. Each base station requires a large investment, each serving a highly variable load throughout the day.

To scale 5G, operators need to reduce costs by improving utilization and increasing competition among equipment vendors. This has inspired new standards, especially Open RAN (O-RAN), which promotes off-the-shelf hardware and open interfaces. While O-RAN is an attractive option, there are still gaps in expanding the market - we need more chips to support hardware manufacturers and encourage new manufacturers to enter the market.

Irresistible force

There are a lot of business drivers behind the expansion of O-RAN. Network operators will certainly be actively involved, and other emerging operators will also lend a hand. Rakuten, a company known for its e-commerce advertising, is about to launch a full O-RAN in Japan, hoping to direct more e-commerce traffic to them. Meanwhile, Dish Network is building an O-RAN network that promises to cover 70% of users in the United States by 2023. Facebook is working hard to advance their telecom infrastructure projects, and no doubt they hope that like Rakuten, the more traffic they can push through RAN, the more their advertising revenue will grow.

Of course, other established companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung are also active.

Political motivation is equally important. The US government, represented by the FCC, is very optimistic about O-RAN for obvious reasons: it not only stimulates competition that benefits everyone, but also avoids the risks of being forced to use mainstream suppliers that are detrimental to national security.

Filling gaps in the supply chain

It all sounds great. So why isn’t it up and running yet? Because there’s a gap in the supply chain – a lack of innovative chips that these infrastructure equipment solutions rely on to be manufactured at scale.

Without getting too deep into O-RAN technology, the antenna connects to the radio unit (RU) which handles the physical layer front end, and then to the distributed unit (DU) which performs the rest of the baseband functions. It then connects to the central unit (CU) via mid-haul, and then to the core network via backhaul (note: this is one of several possible topologies).

O-RAN explicitly specifies that the interfaces between the RU, DU, and CU units (which until now have been proprietary to each incumbent RAN vendor) will allow operators to mix and match units from different vendors. The interfaces are open, but the hardware and software running on each unit remains vendor-specific, allowing vendors to compete and win.

How is the hardware built? Dedicated chips offer the best price/performance and have so far been the preferred choice of large equipment vendors, but custom chips require a lot of investment and expertise. Alternatively, you can use standard server platforms for the CU and DU, but these are expensive and difficult to scale to the demanding massive MIMO we expect from modern 5G networks. FPGAs are an alternative for the RU modem, but they are also expensive and power-hungry.

The obvious answer to this problem is to develop more custom chips to support O-RAN, thereby creating more competition around features, price, and performance.

There is a healthy ecosystem in this space, from secure virtualization platform vendors to CU and DU hardware vendors, RU hardware and software vendors, virtualized RAN software, and system integrators. We just need more silicon platform options to choose from.

These chip manufacturers must build on proven infrastructure in the O-RAN space, such as DSP-based platforms, which can be a cost-effective alternative to current COTS-based solutions. This platform, based on long-term expertise and successful experience in the field of wireless communications, has been adopted by leading infrastructure equipment OEMs. The development of O-RAN is about to enter a stage by using the most advanced DSPs optimized for baseband processing and allowing them to compete head-on with traditional RAN solutions.

Whether you plan to build a DU or RU, you may be surprised at how DSPs, such as the CEVA-XC16 baseband processor, can advance O-RAN infrastructure and provide a smoother, more cost-effective and scalable migration path to 5G baseband IP platforms compared to standard COTS platforms.