Radisys and KDDI Research recently completed what they claim is the world’s first successful demonstration showcasing RAN slicing involving different traffic streams with different latency requirements on a single Radio Unit (RU) connected to multiple Centralized Units/Distributed Units in a disaggregated network topology.
Network slice orchestration is a central architectural construct for 5G networks and mobile operators crucially need this flexibility to create service-specific network slices to deploy complex 5G services cost effectively.
To demonstrate 5G RAN slicing, Radisys created the entire end-to-end configuration comprised of the 5G New Radio in Standalone mode operating in sub-6 GHz and the 5G core nodes, and it demonstrated services to ride on network slices.
The demonstration included the creation of a network slice for eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband) service that spanned a pair of Distributed Units (DU) in an edge cloud site and a Centralized Unit User Plane (CU-UP) in a regional cloud site. This allows an architectural construct of a Network Slice consisting of Intelligent Edge and regional cloud with functionalities to host a 5G service. While eMBB is a high-speed data service, another network slice was created for Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communication (URLLC) service employing another pair of DUs in the edge cloud.
Arun Bhikshesvaran, CEO, Radisys
Our deep partnership with KDDI Research is evident with this critical demonstration of advanced network slicing where we connected multiple CUs and DUs to a single RU.
Yoji Kishi, GM, KDDI Research
Radisys is a global leader with its 5G enabling technology and we were impressed by the flexibility of its architecture as Radisys was able to realize this complex topology with minimal changes to its stack architecture.
