Small Cell Forum: 5G Small Cell Open RAN Reference Design

10th February 2021 [Global] – 5G Small Cell Open RAN Reference Design.

Within the Small Cell Forum consortium of companies, arQana Technologies is calling for SCF partners to work together on SCF251, a proposed work group for developing a Reference Design of a Sub-6 GHz 5G Small Cell Open RAN.

Small Cells enable Mobile Network Operators to deploy sites in strategic locations offering smaller coverage with higher capacities, using licensed and unlicensed wireless spectrum. However, Small Cells come in a huge variety of form factors, different architectures and end-uses. All these require standardization: Small Cell Forum is helping the mobile infrastructure to move faster towards a bestcase market growth scenario.

Today, the baseband to transceiver interface is typically realized using a high-data rate digital interface but the pin-outs between vendors are not entirely standardized. The biggest issue is that the Radio Frequency Front End cannot be universal: the hardware is dependent on the frequency and output power among other factors.

Therefore, there will still be the need for multiple different front-end modules, which they all need to interface to the transceiver. Thus, the connection and communication between Radio Frequency Front End and the rest of the communication system should be standardized for optimal performance and maximum scalability, and for increasing vendors’ diversification.

Furthermore, interface connections in the different network splits and in between small cells are not uniform across the different solutions and therefore there are: limited availability, long lead times and an important lack of economy of scale, causing much frustration to installers.

The goals of this work group will be:

1. To develop a 5G Small Cell Reference Design as a Minimum Viable Product. The design should allow flexibility and the ability of interchanging any Radio Frequency Front Endmodule, from the rest of the reference design, which will remain common to all small cells.
2. To develop a scalable open interface to the Radio Frequency Front End module. The reference design could be based on the nFAPI Option 6 S-RU and Option 2 F1.
3. To develop an open and standard design for the internal and external interface connections of such small cell reference design.

This work item is just beginning (Jan 2021), and is being led by representatives from arQana Technologies, Picocom and Senko. If you are an SCF member company you can get involved in this work item by contacting member services. If your company is interested in this topic and would like to join the forum, email info@smallcellforum.org for more details.

arQana Technologies, established in 2014, designs and develops integrated circuits, modules, and subsystems for Radio Frequency, microwave, and mmWave applications. At Sub-6 GHz bands, arQana is developing Power Amplifiers (PA), Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA), Switches, and Front-End Modules (FEM) at different frequency bands, for applications in 4G, 5G and Wireless Infrastructure.

The Small Cell Forum partners with private enterprises and works with regulators and municipalities to remove commercial and technical barriers to drive network densification. The input gathered from global service providers and enterprises shape the Small Cell Forum’s work areas, which include 5G small cells, regulation and health concerns; neutral hosting for multi-operators; private networks; and edge computing.

arQana Technologies: contact@arqana-tech.com
Small Cell Forum: info@smallcellforum.org