Alcatel-Lucent and China Mobile have held the first field trial of a virtualised radio access network based on NFV technology.
The network covered 442 hectares of Beijing’s Tisinghua University, providing indoor and outdoor coverage to around 57,000 students and teachers. Alcatel-Lucent said the trial helped demonstrate how NFV can scale network resources according to traffic demands and was an important benchmark on the way to 5G, with connections widely expected to rocket.
The vendor said its vRAN technology allows operators the ability to perform load balancing and real-time migration across its network, which it said will reduce operating costs. It added the vRAN has increased spectral efficiency with lower levels of interference, as well as enhanced cell site coordination to improve network performance and host cell edge applications.
The demonstration follows the vendor extending its partnership with Telefónica to explore how virtualisation fits into the Internet of Things. Both companies held a four-way video conference call at Mobile World Congress in March by using Voice over LTE.
Glenn Booth, Senior Vice President and General Manger of Alcatel-Lucent’s LTE Business Unit, said: “Alcatel-Lucent is committed to delivering the latest innovations that enable our customers to get the most out of their LTE networks and enable a smooth path to 5G. This trial is a prime example of how we are working with customers to develop, test and deploy networks with the highest performance and efficiencies and the lowest costs.”
Dr. Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist of China Mobile Research Institute, said: “The vRAN technology will allow us to deliver new efficiencies across our network as our customers’ data demands change and more devices connect to our network. We are interested to see how the deployment of Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN will help us to smoothly evolve our networks to meet these demands.”