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.
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.
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.