VIAVI Solutions has opened its VIAVI Automated Lab-as-a-Service (VALOR) open radio access network (ORAN) testing facility in Chandler, Arizona. Funded by a grant from U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, VALOR offers a fully automated, open and impartial lab-as-a-service / test-as-a-service suite for ORAN interoperability, performance and security.
VALOR addresses the challenges to accelerate ORAN adoption and encourage competition by providing access to test capabilities that, typically, have only been within the reach of large, established players. Now, with its highly automated, on-demand ‘pay-as-you-go’ approach to standardised testing, VALOR simplifies the development and deployment of ORAN technologies, offering new entrants and start-ups a pathway to U.S. certification without the need for significant investment in hardware and software.
Further, complementary to most current existing industry testing labs, VALOR facilitates better readiness for the certification, badging and acceptance tests at OTICs and communications service provider (CSP) labs and is the first test service to be authorised by the telecom infra project (TIP) for their system performance certification program. A dedicated online portal allows customers to easily sign up for service, set up and schedule tests and generate reports optimised for technology development, system verification and pre-certification performance, security and pre-deployment simulation.
Furthermore, VALOR brings together the NITRO Wireless ORAN Test Suite, the VIAVI Automation Management and Orchestration System (VAMOS) unified framework for hybrid physical and cloud lab testing, and technologies from industry-leading partners. These include a joint ORAN radio unit (O-RU) testbed with Rohde & Schwarz for O-RU conformance and network energy saving tests, a large ETS-Lindgren radio frequency (RF) anechoic chamber for Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) and beamforming over-the-air (OTA) performance testing, and ‘golden’ ORAN-compliant ORAN central unit (O-CU), ORAN distributed unit (O-DU) and O-RU reference technologies from Fujitsu, SOLiD and Capgemini.
VALOR leverages VIAVI’s proven performance and interoperability tests used throughout the industry for third generation partnership project (3GPP) and ORAN with cloud, intelligence, automation and digital twin technology. Services include TM500 O-RU and O-DU and TeraVM O-CU subsystem conformance, performance and interoperability testing, and end-to-end testing with core emulation and TeraVM RAN scenario generator RAN intelligent controller (RIC)/ service management and orchestration (SMO) tests covering conformance and performance validation and training of rApps and xApps. The service will ultimately offer over 500 test cases compliant with O-RAN WG4, WG5, WG11, TIFG and 3GPP specifications.
Commenting on the announcement, Oleg Khaykin, president and chief executive officer, VIAVI, said, “The grand opening of VALOR lab is an important step in democratising ORAN testing for technology vendors by providing them with rapid access to comprehensive end-to-end solutions for everything from product development to performance stress tests. Supporting the services of existing industry test labs, VALOR closes existing test gaps and is set to play a key role in accelerating ORAN adoption and encouraging new entrants to the ORAN ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, Sarah Skaluba, special policy advisor for telecom policy and the innovation fund, NTIA, said, “We know testing and evaluation is critical to ORAN’s success and look forward to seeing the impact of these grants for years to come.”
