Fujitsu Network Communications will contribute its Massive MIMO radio units as part of Evenstar, a program spearheaded by Meta Connectivity, to accelerate the adoption of open radio access network (RAN) technologies.
The radio units are compliant with 3GPP specifications and will be tested, validated and listed on the TIP Exchange Marketplace in the second half of this year.
Fujitsu is no stranger to the Evenstar/TIP initiative. Evenstar was announced in February 2020 as part of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP), of which Facebook was one of the founders.
Last year, Fujitsu announced it was contributing 5G multi-band open RAN-compliant radios to the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) Open RAN project group. The dual-band and tri-band radios are certified by Fujitsu and listed on the TIP Exchange marketplace, where they’re available for service providers to find interoperable solutions and reference designs for 4G and 5G networks.
In this case, Fujitsu will provide 3.5 GHz radio units that support O-RAN standardized interfaces.
With 64T64R antennas, the massive Multi-User MIMO radios will deliver higher spectral efficiency, better coverage and lower interference at the cell edge than traditional radios, according to a company press release.
Leveraging Fujitsu’s experience in artificial intelligence (AI), the radio hardware will feature advanced beam steering capabilities, including Dynamic Weight Based Beam Steering, UE (User Equipment) Channel Information Based Beam Steering and Attributed Based Dynamic Beam Steering to intelligently provide capacity when and where needed, the company noted.
“Massive MIMO technology provides dramatic advancements in throughput and spectral efficiency which enable performance improvements for superior 5G consumer experiences,” said Femi Adeyemi, head of the wireless business unit at Fujitsu Network Communications, in a statement. “Our collaboration with Evenstar will give global service providers more 5G ecosystem options, accelerate delivery of 5G services, and support carbon neutrality for a sustainable society.”
Fujitsu’s open RAN 5G radios are currently deployed with Dish, NTT, KDDI and Deutsche Telekom, a spokesperson said. While Fujitsu previously contributed and certified 5G dual/tri-band radios to TIP for the TIP marketplace, this is the first contribution for the massive MIMO radios.