Verizon completes successful end-to-end fully virtualised 5G data session

Earlier this month, Verizon launched 5G mobile edge compute live for developers with AWS Wavelength at Verizon’s 5G Edge locations in Boston and the Bay Area. As Verizon extends its MEC leadership, virtualisation in the Radio Access Network (RAN) becomes even more important.

Virtualising the RAN, like the virtualisation work previously completed in the core of the network, decouples software and hardware functionality enabling the network to be built on general purpose hardware.

Using Common Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware leads to greater flexibility and agility in the introduction of new products and services. Instead of adding or upgrading single-purpose hardware, the move to a cloud native, container-based virtualised architecture with standardised interfaces leads to greater flexibility, faster delivery of services, greater scalability, and improved cost efficiency in networks.

“Virtualising the entire network from the core to the edge has been a massive, multi-year redesign effort of our network architecture that simplifies and modernises our entire network,” said Adam Koeppe, Senior Vice President of Technology and Planning for Verizon. “Verizon has been on the leading edge of virtualising the core over the past few years and has been bullish in the design and development of open RAN technology, as well as in the testing of that technology with great success.”

This virtualisation will also lower the barrier to entry for new vendors in the ecosystem. New entrants will accelerate innovation, reduce operating costs, and lay the groundwork for flexible network and cloud infrastructure closer to the customer, eventually leading to single digit latency. Key 5G use cases focused on providing the best, most efficient network for customers, will heavily rely on the programmability of virtualised networks.

“Massive scale IOT solutions, more robust consumer devices and solutions, AR/VR, remote healthcare, autonomous robotics in manufacturing environments, and ubiquitous smart city solutions are only some of the ways we will be able to deliver the promise of the digital world. Advancements in virtualisation technology are critical steps towards that realisation,” said Koeppe.

It takes a village

Verizon coordinated with many partners in this demonstration of successful virtualisation in the Radio Access Network.

Samsung provided its commercial 5G virtualised RAN solution, consisting of a virtualised Central Unit (vCU), a virtualised Distributed Unit (vDU), and radio units. The solution can provide mobile operators with improved efficiency, flexibility, and management benefits through the deployment of a software-based 5G radio infrastructure. Samsung announced commercial availability of its fully-virtualised 5G RAN solution last month.

Intel provided its Intel Xeon Scalable processor, Intel FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card (Intel FPGA PAC) N3000, Intel Ethernet Network Adapter XXV710 to deliver the processing, acceleration and connectivity requirements, and its FlexRAN software reference architecture.

Wind River is providing Verizon with a cloud-native, Kubernetes- and container-based software infrastructure, which delivers ultra-low latency and high availability for national deployment of virtualised 5G RAN. Wind River’s solution is integrated with vRAN applications, providing single-pane-of-glass and zero-touch automated management, and network analytics.

Verizon continues to build on past success in virtualisation

Verizon first announced achievements towards its virtualisation efforts in early 2019 when it became the first in the world to introduce cloud-native technology in a live wireless core network environment and then demonstrated the technology in a successful trial of the 5G standalone core earlier this year.

Following virtualisation of the core, Verizon successfully tested virtualization of baseband unit operations in a lab environment in 2019. Today, virtualisation efforts culminated in an end-to-end, live network environment demonstration. Full vRAN deployment will commence in the coming months.