The xRAN Forum (xRAN) announced public availability of the xRAN Fronthaul Control, User and Synchronization (CUS) Plane Specification Version 2.0 and the xRAN Fronthaul Management Plane (MP) Specification Version 1.0.
The specifications have been designed to allow a wide range of vendors to develop innovative, best-of-breed RRUs and BBUs for a wide range of deployment scenarios, which can be easily integrated with virtualized infrastructure & management systems using standardized data models.
The second major version of CUS-plane specification incorporates several enhancements over the first version including:
- Support for 2 radio categories (A and B) to enable both simple and more complex functionality leveraging largely the same interface specification
- Additional compression modes to provide increased fronthaul bandwidth savings
- Support for critical items such as synchronization and timing to enable commercialization and interoperability in deployments
- Support for additional LTE system features like LAA, NB-IOT, including improved efficiency in parsing of U-plane packets
The first version of M-plane specification is a significant milestone for the industry. It provides an open multi-vendor M-plane model for radios based on standardized modern protocols like NETCONF/YANG and includes key capabilities:
- Support for features and capabilities in v1.0 of CUS specification and several enhancements in v2.0 of CUS specification
- Flexible management architecture providing support for traditional hierarchical and hybrid (multiple NETCONF clients or EMS can directly communicate with radio) deployment models
- A comprehensive YANG model developed for 4G & 5G radios building upon industry accepted data models
