Nokia, Arm and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have completed a joint lab trial of cloud RAN with in-line acceleration at Nokia’s innovation centre in Dallas, Texas.

The trial, which saw the completion of an end-to-end cloud RAN L3 data call, demonstrated the flexibility of Nokia’s cloud RAN technology using in-line accelerator architecture that works seamlessly on multiple silicon architectures. It is further evidence of the viability of Nokia’s AnyRAN approach, which ensures the feature performance consistency of cloud RAN with purpose-built RAN while enabling more choice for operators to build cloud RAN networks.

The trial saw the completion of a cloud RAN L3 data call using Ampere Computing’s Arm-based general-purpose processor, the HPE (www.hpe.com) ProLiant RL series server and Nokia’s cloud RAN in-line layer-one accelerator and cloud RAN software. It took place over-the-air using Nokia’s AirScale massive MIMO radios using 100MHz cells on the n78 spectrum band (3.5GHz), which is the most common 5G capacity band worldwide.

Data calls were successfully performed with a selection of both test and commercial user devices. The trial proved the performance of the in-line acceleration architecture chosen by Nokia.

The trial highlights the openness offered by Nokia’s AnyRAN approach. In-line acceleration in servers with Arm processors works in Nokia’s cloud RAN architecture. The approach ensures the same performance and interoperability as purpose-built RAN and cloud RAN with other server designs. It is this flexibility that provides network operators with a smooth evolution path in hybrid networks, as well as ensuring that cloud RAN with Nokia is open to server processor design choices.

“Network operators are being challenged with increasing energy costs and looking for ways to improve the efficiency of their networks,” said Mohamed Awad, senior vice president at Arm (www.arm.com). “Our collaboration with Nokia and HPE is enabling innovative cloud RAN, powered by energy-efficient and high-performance Arm Neoverse-based servers and in-line accelerators, to deliver the flexibility and scalability the 5G era demands.”

Mark Atkinson, head of RAN at Nokia (www.nokia.com), added: “We have once again proven the effectiveness and maturity of Nokia’s AnyRAN approach by demonstrating how our cloud RAN using in-line accelerator architecture works seamlessly on multiple silicon architectures, and harnesses the power of Arm-based servers to enable 5G at scale. Nokia’s approach to cloud RAN means we can deliver performance consistency between cloud RAN and purpose-built RAN ensuring our customers have choice and flexibility.”