Anritsu’s participation in O-RAN global PlugFest fall 2022

Anritsu is pleased to announce that, as a member of both the O-RAN ALLIANCE and TIP OpenRAN project group, it has successfully participated in three O-RAN Global PlugFest Fall 2022 venues as follows:

• Kanagawa, Japan.  PlugFest in Japan hosted by KDDI, NTT DOCOMO, Rakuten Mobile, Softbank, and Yokosuka Research Park (YRP) at Japan OTIC (Open Testing and Integration Centre). Anritsu joined PlugFest in collaboration with Rakuten Mobile Inc. and NEC Corporation. The testbed consisted of NEC’s O-RU and Anritsu’s O-RAN solution. At PlugFest, O-RAN WG4 conformance tests were conducted by O-RAN WG4 defined S/M/C/U-Plane test scenarios. In addition, E2E throughput performance was evaluated by adding timing errors at the S-Plane.

• Durham, North America. PlugFest hosted by the University of New Hampshire's Interoperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL). Anritsu joined PlugFest in collaboration with Fujitsu. The testbed consisted of Fujitsu’s O-RU (O-RAN Radio Unit) and Anritsu’s O-RAN test solution. At PlugFest, ‘time error injection tests’ on S-Plane and functional tests on status change messages reported by O-RU were validated, together with O-RAN WG4 defined S/M/C/U-Plane test scenarios.

• Berlin, Germany. Joint European O-RAN and TIP PlugFest hosted by Deutsche Telekom, EANTC, and Vodafone.Anritsu offered its unique network tester, the MT1000A, for testbed synchronicity tests. The tester supports synchronicity tests for Sync-E, IEEE 1588 packet time error and wander analysis.

Anritsu’s O-RAN test solution is used at the venues consisting of Anritsu’s O-DU emulator, network master pro MT1000A and signal analyser MS2850A.

By participating in the PlugFests, Anritsu is providing diversity in testing the O-RAN ecosystem and contributing to the construction of secure mobile networks by offering test scenarios that are a closer match to a real field network environment.

The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) has open interoperable interfaces that drive vendor diversity, increase innovation, and improve time to market. However, O-RAN provides more challenges for network synchronisation and requires more extensive interoperability and performance testing. The key O-RU testing challenges include how to reduce the complexity of setting O-RAN fronthaul parameters, how to accurately synchronise the device with all network elements, and how to qualify O-RU performance - not only with standardised test cases, but also using the test scenarios closer to a real field network situation. Anritsu is providing a unique O-RAN Test Platform to address these challenges.

The signal analyser MS2850A, covering 9kHz to 32 or 44.5GHz, is a high-performance RF signal analyser supporting an analysis bandwidth of up to 1GHz. It also offers excellent flatness and a spurious-free dynamic range to support wideband communications measurements, such as 5G mobile communications and broadcast satellite equipment.

The network master pro MT1000A is an all-in-one transport network tester for speeds from 1.5Mbps to 100Gbps using various technologies and supports PTP/SyncE tests in the S-Plane.