Accelleran technology validated through O-RAN Alliance Global Plugfest demonstrations

Success on two key test tracks emphasizes high degrees of interoperability

Antwerp, Belgium – 16 December 2021 – Accelleran, a leading provider of OpenRAN software solutions for 4G/5G networks, has contributed to the O-RAN Alliance’s Virtual Showcase with two ground-breaking new demonstrations. This showcase event concluded the 3rd O-RAN Alliance Global Plugfest – where many weeks of OpenRAN interoperability testing work had been carried out in labs across Europe, Asia and North America. The Accelleran-related test activities, which concerned the company’s dRAX^TM 5G Centralized Unit (CU) and near real-time RAN intelligent controller (RIC), were conducted at the i14y Lab in Berlin, which acted as European Open Testing and Integration Centre (OTIC).

The first of the demonstrations focused on benchmarking the Accelleran dRAX CU component load and scalability. This was undertaken on two separate test beds, based on emulator equipment from Keysight Technologies and TeraVM O-CU Tester from VIAVI Solutions respectively. Using these testbeds, a number of load scenarios were experimented with – covering different User Equipment (UE), radio unit (RU) and distributed unit (DU) configurations. The work confirmed the interoperability of Accelleran centralized unit (CU) in such scenarios – highlighting their ability to support different DU/RU/UE arrangements, as well as different prospective workloads, while using non-accelerated standard server hardware.

The second activity looked at the dRAX^TM near real-time RAN intelligent controller (RIC), with a specific focus on O-RAN defined E2 interface. The test was conducted with VIAVI TeraVM O-RAN RIC Test, confirming that dRAX RIC E2 interoperability could be fully achieved. It also verified the ability of the accompanying xApps, developed using dRAX RIC SDK, to deal with data coming through this interface.

“These plugfest demonstrations clearly validate Accelleran’s ongoing contribution to the OpenRAN ecosystem and that we can live up to the industry’s expectations. It makes clear that our technology can work seamlessly with other vendors’ components via O-RAN specified interfaces.” states Arnaud Polster, CSO at Accelleran. “The demonstrations underline how we enable MNOs to gain differentiation via our software in the areas of standards-based RAN Intelligence, cloud-native CU scalability and hardware independence.”