Türk Telekom in partnership with Turkish-based technology vendor Argela have incorporated ProgRAN, Argela’s fully programmable radio access network (RAN) architecture that allows dynamic RAN slicing into Türk Telekom’s commercial LTE-A network.
The limited deployment covers an enterprise area in Istanbul’s commercial center, Maslak. There are plans on extending the demonstration to a second location in Turkey’s capital, Ankara in the near future.
Argela’s ProgRAN provides a dynamically programmable RAN architecture. Its SDN-based programmability feature allows creation, modification, or termination of RAN slices in real-time, where each slice utilizes its own RAN control functions and governs its own wireless resources, allowing operators to quickly innovate new revenue generating services using the platform. Such potential services include massive IoT connectivity, mission-critical services, multimedia applications, MVNOs, Public Safety Networks, time and geography-limited resource reservations for public or private events, as well as dynamic RAN sharing.
For each use case, ProgRAN can dynamically create a new RAN slice using a so-called profile definition, said Argela. The ProgRAN profile specifies the size of the RAN slice, the identities of the eNodeBs and devices that are affected, the time duration for the slice as well as the desired RAN control functionalities to achieve the desired service quality.
Türk Telekom and Argela plan on extending their RAN slicing demonstration to include C-RAN platforms in the near future.
Firat Yaman Er, Chief Strategy and Business Planning Officer at Türk Telekom
For economies of scale, it is imperative to develop a single, highly programmable network that can meet the diverse requirements of all these applications, and ensure that the network remains profitable for the operator. 5G aims to use network slices for this purpose.
Bülent Kaytaz, Argela CEO
A RAN architecture built on the pillars of software-defined networking and network virtualization is necessary to effectively use the limited wireless resources amongst increasingly diverse use cases. At Argela we have developed ProgRAN with 5G in mind, but also made sure that it is operational on today’s LTE networks so operators do not have to wait until 2020 to start using the network slicing technology.
