CommScope is joining the Evenstar program, which is led by Meta Connectivity, to accelerate the adoption of open RAN technologies.
When Evenstar was announced in February 2020, it was part of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) of which Facebook was a founder. But since then, Facebook has changed its name to Meta, and Meta Connectivity has been taking more of the leading role in the Evenstar program.
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For this story, Meta said, “Meta is a TIP member and continues to participate in TIP together with other ecosystem partners around the world, including in the OpenRAN Project Group where Evenstar solutions are being contributed.”
Evenstar’s goal is to design and manufacture open radio access network (RAN) radios and to develop general purpose reference designs for the open RAN ecosystem.
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CommScope and Meta Connectivity
For its part CommScope’s focus will be on creating open interface reference designs for Massive MIMO antennas and filter panels.
Massive MIMO radios substantially increase spectral efficiency to deliver more network capacity and wider coverage.
The massive MIMO reference design from Evenstar will provide operators with the option to further disaggregate the filter/antenna elements from the radio unit, supporting flexibility and delivering implementation options to the market.
Meta Connectivity is working with control unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU) software vendors who will manage interoperability testing, while CommScope will support Over-the-Air (OTA) testing and characterization of the antenna within a laboratory environment.
“We are excited to have CommScope’s expertise in innovative antenna interfaces as part of our Evenstar program,” said Jaydeep Ranade, director of wireless engineering at Meta Connectivity, in a statement.