Open RAN for Indoor Small Cells

Why it's so cool, and how Rantastic helps with it?

Open RAN comes to the Indoor Wireless Industry

This week we are in Rantastic are focused on the Open RAN Small Cells.

As 5G in many countries and regions works well outside (see this umlaut's report for 5g in the US for example. Report) many MNO's and its partners are heading to indoors.

5G covered states and Carriers in the US

Hence, we expect more and more 5G small cells deployed indoors.

Plus, Private 5G/LTE networks are booming.

At the same time, Qualcomm Unveils Industry's First Release 16 5G Open RAN Platform for Small Cells, meanwhile Open RAN lead Mavenir releases Multi-G Open RAN Small Cell Solutions.

So, we have three perfect components of the new Indoor opportunities — demand, new technologies, new spectrum — it's all means the new opportunities for the Venue Owners.

Why the Open RAN it's important for indoor systems?

The very first reason is that it offers the first Neutral Host In-Building (NHIB) OpenRAN technology. The technology platform is the first cloud-enabled solution that solves indoor mobile connectivity challenges by enabling the ability to host multiple networks using the same IT infrastructure, providing considerable cost savings for MNOs.

For the building owners, it means that you can build your own indoor infrastructure using your own, simplified equipment, and provide the service for MNO's — just connecting them throughout the cloud!

Build your platform and let MNO's working inside the venues.

Whats so special in Open RAN infrastructure?

A few worlds regarding the benefits of the Open RAN infrastructure over a classical MNO's approach.

O-RAN offers Disaggregated Network Topology Split Options, meaining of migrating from custom network nodes to a far more flexible approach that enables network nodes to be implemented in software running on generic hardware platforms. In the core network, this process is in an advanced state, with virtualisation and orchestration techniques from the IT world now being used to deploy network functions automatically at a large scale.

The process is a lot more difficult in the RAN and backhaul network, and the prize for MNOs is greater here as these functions typically account for 70-80% of Capex. In Release 15, the 3GPP identified various functional splits in the 5G NR RAN gNodeB (base station) that would facilitate this process, identifying eight possible places where the gNodeB function could be split into separate functional units. The most popular of these are:

Disaggregated Network Topology Split Options by Picocom (https://picocom.com/tech/#split_2)

Rantastic offers a very simple way of planning all these Small Cells right on top of your AutoCAD plan.

As you can see below, you need just a 3 simple steps to get 5G Small Cell coverage inside a mall — 10 Small Cells and 10 minutes in total to get the BoQ and understand the challenges for this object planning.