Bharti Airtel has hosted the ‘O-RAN Alliance Global PlugFest 2021’ in India in partnership with leading global and Indian technology companies. The event was conducted at Airtel’s state-of-the-art network experience centre in Manesar (Gurugram), India.

This was the second ‘O-RAN Alliance Global PlugFest’ hosted in India by Airtel. This year’s edition saw wider participation from members of the global O-RAN community. Airtel was joined by AMI, ASOCS, Capgemini Engineering, Cisco, Intel, IP Infusion, Keysight Technologies, Mavenir, Sercomm, STL, TCS, VIAVI Solutions, VMware and VVDN.

Key technology demonstrations at the ‘O-RAN Alliance Global Plugfest’ hosted by Airtel include –

  • 5G SA traffic steering (TS) use case to demonstrate benefit of xApp/RIC, with traffic steering of users from source gNB to target gNB using real CU/DU E2 nodes based on control from xApp, and with xApp developed using SDK (VMware & Capgemini Engineering)
  • EN-DC NSA TS use case with an integrated RL framework in near-RT RIC developed using APIs and E2SM-RC/KPM service models, where UEs are steered from their primary NR cells in secondary source gNB to optimal target NR cells in secondary target gNB. E2 nodes and UEs were NS3-simulated (Mavenir)
  • Policy-driven traffic-steering of slice-users between 4G and 5G cells in a serving area using simulated E2 nodes (TCS RIC and VIAVI TeraVM RIC test)
  • O-RAN infrastructure security feature demonstration with AMI security solutions (AMI TruE) using Intel Technologies
  • Sercomm small cell RU+O-DU testing with VIAVI O-CU sim and core EM
  • STL small cell split 7.2 O-RU (Garuda) MS plane testing and integration with ASOCS  O-DU/CU/5GC (CYRUS) using  IP infusion’s disaggregated cell site gateway (DCSG) as FH switch and synchronization source
  • Open fronthaul gateway – disaggregated, open programmable platform demonstration from CISCO, VVDN and Keysight Technologies

 

Airtel has been a board member since the beginning of O-RAN Alliance, which now associates a world-wide community of more than 300 telecom operators, vendors and research and academic institutions working in a transparent way to develop a sustainable open RAN ecosystem. The O-RAN Alliance Global PlugFest provides a platform to the global O-RAN community to integrate and test the O-RAN based solutions, including 5G and 4G.

Commenting on the event, Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Bharti Airtel, said, “We are thrilled to be leading the O-RAN initiative in India and bringing together technology companies who share our vision of building an open, intelligent, cloud-based RAN ecosystem. The enthusiastic response to the event underscores the growing maturity of O-RAN and the global conviction towards this movement. The learnings from this plugfest will further accelerate the journey to ‘make in India’ O-RAN based 5G solutions that can be deployed widely across India and the rest of the world.”