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CUSTOMIZABLE 5G ORAN RU PLATFORM

Investor’s primary concerns in adopting new technologies is the cost of deploying and operating the systems in terms of capital (capex) and operational (opex) expenditures, as well as the time taken to see a return on investment.

 

Investors are always challenged to address the changing needs of technology and customers while fulfilling their own goals, since changes necessitate system upgrades, and updating inflexible existing systems might jeopardize an investor’s financial aspects.

 

Faststream Technologies brings in a cost-effective, customizable 5G O-RU Digital Front End (DFE) Platform. Our solution enables the deployment of 5G systems with configurable models to upgrade the system without the need to replace hardware components, offering a solution to match the evolving requirements of technology and facilitate the client with the most recent technological advancements.

 

Faststream Technologies adaptable 5G O-RU Digital Front End (DFE) platform solution tackles the crucial power consumption and cost issues of next-generation networks and makes substantial improvements in size and weight. DFE platform has a wide range of features and capabilities, including advanced modulation schemes, beamforming, and support for multiple frequency bands.

 

Faststream Technologies algorithm team works closely with leading PA vendors to develop the most effective linearized alternatives for the most recent PA technologies leading to reduction in development time while providing the most sophisticated CFR and PA/DPD pairing for your designs across band and power variations.

 

Faststream makes miniaturization and low power consumption a reality for Radio Units that use highly efficient, wide-band power amplification technology to speed up the delivery of 5G services.

Customizable 5G RU Platform

 

The RU platform provides a complete solution from optical fronthaul to RF and allows for hardware and software customization for macro and small cell RUs. The fully integrated platform leverages market-leading technologies that drive advanced 5G RU requirements, support for all sub-6 GHz band and power variants, multiband applications, and massive MIMO platform.

 

For communication with base station controllers (CU/DU), FST 5G RU employs O-RAN standard specifications for the fronthaul interface. This enables the establishment of a flexible network with an O-RAN configuration by connecting the base station controllers from different vendors that conforms to this specification.

 

Customizable 5G RU Platform includes RF Front End, Digital Front End, Lower PHY Baseband Processing, and Synchronization and Fronthaul Transport, running on the Intel® advanced node AGF014 Agilex™ FPGA.

 

RF Front End: RF Front End comprises of all the electronics required to interface between antennas and the digital front end of an RF system. The major components of RF Front End in 5G O-RAN

  • Antenna arrays
  • Power Amplifiers (PA)
  • Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA)
  • Band pass filters
  • Digital to Analog Converters (DAC)
  • Analog to Digital Converters (ADC)

Digital Front End: Digital Front End is a crucial part of the 5G RU where in the baseband processing of the 5G signal is carried out digital environment. The major components of the 5G RU Digital Front End includes

Lower PHY Baseband Processing: Lower PHY layer includes functions of

  • FFT/iFFT
  • CP addition and Removal
  • PRACH filtering
  • Digital beamforming

Synchronization and Fronthaul Transport: Fronthaul connection synchronization is accomplished using GPS/PTP (IEEE 1588) modules. Both fiber and Ethernet may be used to provide the fronthaul link between RU and DU, which is based on the eCPRI (Enhanced Common Public Radio Interface).

Customizable 5g Oran Ru Platform

Our solution combines hardened digital front end (DFE) blocks with configurable logic lower PHY, CFR and DPD for mass 5G base station deployment. With the evolution of wireless communication standards, 5G NR signal bandwidth nowadays has exceeded 200MHz. Our company empowers the 5G base station manufacturers with its innovative DPD+CFR algorithm, and help them to solve the RF bottleneck problem. The solution covers 5G NR use cases, including those for the low, mid, and high band spectrums and covers various other RF applications, such as phased array radar and communications test equipment.

Highlights of Our Customizable 5G RU Platform

 

Our solution provides Fully Hardened Radio Subsystem Front End with

  • Up to 7.125 GHz RF Bandwidth.
  • 100 MHz to 200 MHz iBW for 4T4R supporting FR1 radio DFE.
  • 5G NR TDD and FDD TM3.1 and TM3.1a support with 4T4R configuration and also Support various communication standards, 3G / LTE / NR.
  • Crest Factor Reduction module with PAPR < 8 dB for 5G FDD and TDD Traffic.
  • Digital Predistorter with ACPR < -50 dBc, EVM < 3.5% for 5G FDD and TDD Traffic.
  • Half the power of Xilinx RFSoC Gen 3 for radio applications.
  • Make the base station meet or even exceed 3GPP requirements.
  • Optimize the power consumption of the base station and enhance the core competitiveness of the product.
  • Flexible and scalable DFE with Flexibility to enhance hardened IP with adaptive logic.

Multi-Band, Multi-Mode Operation for Flexibility and Scalability

  • Up to 5 component carriers for 100 MHz and 8 component carrier for 200 MHz per antenna path.
  • 100 MHz to 200 MHz iBW support enables RAN sharing.
  • Ability to support multi-mode, multi-band radios with a single device.

Complete Adaptive SoC for Fully Software-Defined Radio

  • Arm® processing subsystem for DFE configuration and control.
  • Configurable logic for differentiation and future market requirements.
  • 10G transceivers with RS-FEC for CPRI, eCPRI, and ORAN FH interfaces.
  • 10G Ethernet integrated cores.

 

 

Features of Our Customizable DFE Solution

 

Direct RF Data Converters

  • RF bandwidth up to 7.125 GHz with a direct support for all FR1 bands.
  • 4 x 10 GSPS DACs and 4 x 1 GSPS ADCs.
  • Integrated mixer, NCO, interpolation & decimation for digital frequency conversion.

RF Signal Processing

  • Specialist signal processing including resampling and equalization.

Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD)

  • Supports up to 200 MHz iBW and the latest RF power amplifier technologies.
  • ACPR less than -50 dBc with an EVM less than 3.5%.
  • DPD+PA testing is carried out on a power amplifier with a gain of 36 dBm and an ACPR of -29 dBc; our approach provides a significant enhancement in the efficiency of PA with an ACPR less than -50 dBc, i.e. about 21 dBc improvement.
  • Reduced weight and thermal management complexity in the radio.

Crest Factor Reduction (CFR)

  • Supports up to 200 MHz instantaneous bandwidth (iBW).
  • PAPR less than 8 dB.
  • Aggregate Peak detection is introduced for lesser suppression of the content while improving ACLR performance.

Digital Up-Conversion (DUC) and Digital Down-Conversion (DDC)

  • Support for up to 5 component carriers (CCs) for 100MHz and 8 components carriers for 200 MHz.
  • Supports a wide range of carrier bandwidths and 200 MHz iBW.

Channel Filtering

  • Support for up to 5 component carriers (CCs) for 100MHz and 8 components carriers for 200 MHz.
  • Supports a wide range of carrier bandwidths for 4G and 5G NR.

 

 

DFE Solution Applications

 

  • 5G Cellular networks
  • TV broadcast networks
  • Multi-mode Wireless Receivers
  • Radio Transceivers
  • Radar processors
  • Next Generation Printing
  • 5G for Government / Private Spectrum
  • Military communication Modems and Satellite communication Modems
  • Portable Test Equipment and UE Emulation / RF Testers

 

Specification of Our Customizable DFE Solution

Next-Generation Transceiver
  • 4T4R support
  • Multi-band FDD/TDD
  • 200 MHz DPD + GaN Support, CFR, DUC/DDC
  • 600 MHz to 7.1 GHz
  • 200 MHz IBW per channel
  • Macro, M-MIMO and small cell support
  • Complete low PHY baseband to O-RAN compliant 7.2 split
  • 7.2x O-RAN compliant Cat A
  • 4T4R, multiband FDD/TDD
  • LTE/5G/NB-IoT support
  • (i)FFT, PRACH
  • C/U/S/M plane processing

Full Digital Beamforming to Improve Radio Quality in 5G System

 

By dramatically improving throughput and communication quality through the use of MIMO antennas and beam-forming algorithms, 5G wireless technology has been able to achieve its one of the key objectives. With MIMO it is possible to achieve the higher throughput by combing the signal collected from multipath as shown in figures. Digital beamforming helps in improving the signal quality by combining the multipath signal and generates beam patterns required to mitigate the interference.

Faststream Technologies Active Antenna System (AAS) improves the radio quality and realizes the stable quality of service by full digital beamforming technology.

Use Cases

1. Sub-6GHz Massive MIMO AAS for Macro Cell

Fastsream’s Sub 6 GHz Massive MIMO with fully digital beamforming is ideal for improving coverage and capacity in densely populated areas.

 

Sub 6 GHz has wider coverage than that of mmWave, and in order to improve radio quality, it is essential to control its coverage and mitigate interference, by inserting the product horizontally into buildings.

Sub-6GHz Massive MIMO AAS for Macro Cell

2. mmWave Massive MIMO AAS for Small Cells

mmWave Massive MIMO AAS for Small Cells

mmWave secures a wider bandwidth and have a high traffic capacity. Utilizing this feature, the installation of mmWave is primarily anticipated in city centers to strengthen the network in specific areas where traffic is concentrated by dense population. However, mmWave radio waves suffer from high propagation loss and are not appropriate for long-distance transport.

 

In order to provide adequate coverage, numerous pieces of equipment must be installed at numerous locations close to end users, such as street furniture where there is a severe lack of space. The mmWave Massive MIMO RU from Faststream is made small and light, which makes installation easier, increases the number of possible sites and lowers operating costs with its low power consumption feature.

Reference Design for M-MIMO System

 

Complete Reference Design Supporting O-RAN 7.2 Split

  • Antenna array to optical cable
  • 4T4R, 4 Downlink 4 Uplink layers, 200 MHz Occupied BW
  • Full thermal and mechanical design

Software

  • Digital pre-distortion and crest factor reduction
  • Antenna calibration
  • Lower Layer 1 and beamforming
  • O-RAN management plane

 

 

4T4R Microcell/Small Cell/Macro O-RAN Compliant RU for 5G wireless infrastructure

 

  • Band and power variant product development time are decreased by modular platform design.
  • RF Front End is tunable in FDD and TDD modes from 600 MHz to 6 GHz.
  • TRx and DFE functions in a 14 mm x 14 mm package
  • O-RAN compliant eCPRI, 7.2x low PHY
  • 100 MHz OBW, ~5 W per antenna

Customizable 5G RU Platform – Types/Operation Mode

1. O-RU “Category A”

  • The O-DU performs the precoding function, allowing for a simple RU design.
  • The fronthaul interface carries spatial streams in the DL that are larger than layers.
  • Figure shows Downlink signal processing for Category A

O-RU Types/Operation Mode O-RU “Category A”

2. O-RU “Category B”

  • Precoding is done in O-RU, which complicates RU design.
  • The fronthaul interface carries spatial layers, which may contain fewer data.
  • This category enables “Modulation Compression” to be performed in the DL in order to effectively send only the bits equivalent to the constellation points, thereby lowering the DL throughput significantly.
  • Category B results in a bandwidth that is approaching the alternative Lower Layer Split 7-3.

O-RU Types/Operation Mode O-RU “Category B”