DiGiCOR | O-RAN based 5G Solution

O-RAN based 5G Solution

5G NR Distributed Unit (DU)

Supermicro and Aliostar 5G Infrastructure

State-of-the-art platforms running best-in-class software infrastructure.
Solving 5G challenges:
New Radio (NR) is a one of the major changes in the transition for 5G; the network will take advantage of a much higher radio frequency to as a means to achieve the higher bandwidth required for the significant increase in connected devices and new use cases. The higher frequencies will have shorter transmission range; therefore, more base stations will be required to cover existing areas. A further challenge of 5G comes down to the deployment; suppliers of Radio Area Network (RAN) equipment are limited to a handful of large internal companies with preoprietary solutions. Whilst mobile network development has been slow; there have been many more innovations with the internet and cloud software.

In a transition to the 5G era, we are seeing service providers migrating to an open architecture-based RAN solution. The O-RAN alliance has quickly been formed with many top global operaters showing interest in the open, cloud-native RAN concept. O-RAN's focuses its attention on building a new 5G RAN on a foundation of virtualised network elements, white-box hardware. and standardise interfaces that fully embrace O-RAN's core principles of telligence and openness. Supermicro is committed to continue their contribution to this solution.

Altiostar is a software vendor that provides 5G-ready virtualised RAN solutions supporting open interfaces and a disaggregated hardware/software solution to build a multi-vendor web-scale network. Their OpenRAN software suite utilises open interfaces which provide a high degree of programmability and automation. The combination of Altiostar’s open software platform and Supermicro’s commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) edge servers make for a reliable, flexible, scalable, and cost-compatible solution to integrate the new RAN.
Management
Applications
Orchestration

ALTIOSTAR
OpenRan Software suite

NFVI Layer

SUPERMICRO
Open Hardware Platforms

Reduce latency and improve the process

Overcome challenged you might face with 5G
Specifically, for the Distributed Unit (DU), the combined solution can support LTE or 5G with baseband functions decoupled from the hardware and deployed on network functions virtualisation (NFV) infrastructure. RAN cloudification is one of the fundamental tenets of the O-RAN architecture. The operators’ NFV and virtual infrastructure manager (VIM) requirements enhance virtualisation platforms in support of various functional splits from 3GPP.
process
DU reference design for O-RAN White Box
The RAN DU sits between the Remote Radio Unit (RRU) and the Central Unit (CU) and includes real-time L2 functions, baseband processing, and radio frequency processing. Currently, Supermicro’s Xeon D-based 1019D-FHN13TP server is being proposed in a draft configuration for the DU in O-RAN’s white box working group. In this configuration, the DU will support 3 sectors of RRUs via a RIM card from Altiostar. The RIM card will provide CPRI-to-eCPRI conversion so that the baseband and radio frequency information can be transmitted over the IP network.
2nd-intel-xeon-high-density-deployment
The above figure demonstrates how the DU will support 12 sectors of RRUs with multiple LTE bands, which require a large amount of digital signal processing in real time to perform the CPRI-to-eCPRI conversion. This task can be offloaded to an FPGA card, to be particular, the Intel FPGA programmable acceleration card N3000; it will accelerate network traffic up to 100Gbps to support low latency and high bandwidth tasks such as FEC and accerlleration at the PHY layer.
In collaboration, Supermicro and Altiostar are working as a team to provide a cloud-native total solution for DU based on open architecture, open API's and open hardware servers; benefiting from cloud computing and innovstions such as SDN, virtualisation and containerisation. The benefits of FPGA plus x86 CPUs are expected to improve the LTE/5G workload using virtualised infrastructure. The scalable design will allow operators to have the flexibility in designing their network, enable software-only remote upgrades to the following generations, and make continuous implementation and deployment a reality.

For Controlled Environments

SYS-1019P-FHN2T
Use Case : Multi-access edge computing (MEC), Centralized/Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN), Universal Customer Premise Equipment (uCPE), Advanced Network Security Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Artificial Intelligence (AI), on Edge, Machine Learning (ML), Retail, Smart Medical Expert Systems
Processor Support
  • Single 2nd Gen. Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors
  • Memory Capacity
  • 6 DIMMs; up to 1.5TB 3DS ECC DDR4-2933MHz RDIMM/LRDIMM
  • PCI-E Expansion Slots
  • 2 PCI-E 3.0 x16 (FHFL) slots
  • Networking
  • 2x 10GBase-T ports with Intel X722 + X557
  • Drive Bays
  • 2 Hot-swap 2.5" SATA3 drive bays
  • M.2
  • Optional 2 Internal 2.5" SATA3 drive bays
  • Power Supply
  • 500W Platinum Level power supplies
  • Other
  • 1 VGA, 1 COM, 2 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0
  • For Demanding Environments

    SYS-1019D-FHN13TP
    Use Case: Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC),Centralized/Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN),Universal Customer Premise Equipment (uCPE), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Artificial Intelligence (AI)
    Processor Support
  • Intel® Xeon® D-2146NT Processor, 8-Core, 16 Threads, 2.3 GHz, 80W
  • Memory Capacity
  • 4 DIMMs; up to 512GB ECC LRDIMM
  • up to 256GB reg ECC RDIMM
  • DDR4-2133MHz
  • PCI-E Expansion Slots
  • 2 PCI-E 3.0 x16 (FHFL) slots
  • Networking
  • 9 GbE (1 port is used for management)
  • 2x 10GbE
  • 2x 10G SFP+
  • and 1 Dedicated IPMI LAN ports
  • Drive Bays
  • 2 2.5" drive bays
  • 2 Internal 2.5" SSD bays
  • 3 M.2
  • Power Supply
  • 350W AC-DC Multi-output Platinum Level Power Supply
  • Other
  • 2 USB 3.0, 1 VGA, 1 COM via RJ45
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