Infovista | RF planning for Open RAN networks | eBook

Learn how to optimize Open RAN networks with advanced RF planning. Discover key insights, proven strategies and the right tools for success.

RF planning for Open RAN networks How to successfully design an Open RAN network

EBOOK

Contents

Introducing Open RAN

The importance of high-quality RF planning

How to ensure successful Open RAN planning

How does planning Open RAN networks differ?

Open RAN planning success story: Rakuten Mobile

Plan your Open RAN network with Planet

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

Introducing Open RAN Traditionally, radio access (RAN) networks have been built using specially designed proprietary hardware and software from specialist network equipment providers. In Open RAN, the RAN is disaggregated into 3 main building blocks: the Radio Unit (RU), the Distributed Unit (DU) and the Centralized Unit (CU). The aim of Open RAN is to allow these building blocks to be virtualized and containerized and have the interfaces between these units open and standardized. This means a network can be built on off-the-shelf hardware and software from many different vendors all working seamlessly together. Open RAN therefore encourages vendor diversity with the aim of reducing costs for the mobile operator and increasing innovation.

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

The importance of high-quality RF planning

Radio Frequency (RF) planning is the critical first step in the lifecycle of a network. A poor network plan will have costly negative impacts for many years to come. A plan with too few sites will result in a network with coverage holes and poor quality. This will require extensive remedial planning and optimization to fix. A plan with too many sites will dramatically increase initial CAPEX and ongoing OPEX and eat into the profits of the company. It is imperative to get the network design right and avoid these two costly scenarios. Careful consideration therefore needs to be given to the planning phase of a new Open RAN network. To achieve high-quality RF designs, operators around the world turn to Infovista’s Planet . Planet is an RF planning and optimization solution that delivers accurate and efficient wireless network planning for both Open RAN and traditional networks.

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

How to ensure successful Open RAN planning

There are several key capabilities an RF planning tool needs to ensure the successful planning of an Open RAN network.

Accuracy The goal of an RF planning tool is to create a digital twin of the planned network to simulate the performance of the network to be built. This gives the planning engineer an opportunity to ensure the network will meet the defined technical and business requirements, and to analyze various what-if traffic scenarios.

How can Planet help?

Planet has many features to ensure it delivers highly accurate network plans. These include native support for 3D planning to accurately model traffic above ground level in buildings. High-resolution digital maps with 3D buildings and vegetation and Planet AIM, our extremely accurate 3D AI-driven propagation model with ray-launching.

Automation

How can Planet help?

Planning an RF network is time consuming and complex with millions of potential configuration options to consider. Automation is not only crucial for offloading repetitive network design tasks so engineers can focus on the higher value strategic tasks, but it is also an extremely efficient way to trial millions of cell site configuration options is a very short space of time to arrive at the optimal solution.

Planet delivers efficiency by automating repetitive network design tasks, freeing up engineers to focus on higher value items and by leveraging AI to automate network design workflows, effectively managing network complexity and helping engineers maximize overall network ROI.

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

Data-driven decision making When planning a new greenfield network, or an expansion to an existing network, a planning engineer often needs to make assumptions on things like how much traffic will be generated. These assumptions, if incorrect, can have a big negative impact on the performance of the network when it is built. These assumptions can be dramatically improved by leveraging the large amounts of data available to operators to improve decision making.

Integration RF planning is just one of the many steps required to build a successful network. By integrating across department silos, business processes become more efficient, increasing productivity and data can be shared improving network operations.

How can Planet help?

Planet can integrate many other network engineering functions via its open APIs. For example, Planet data can be used to identify specific locations (sweet spots) where drive testing will generate the widest scope of results for minimal effort. And in the other direction, drive testing measurements from the live network can be used to fine-tune propagation models resulting in more accurate network designs.

Planet allows you to combine live network measurements including crowdsourced data and call traces with predictions to maximize your insights and ultimately improve the accuracy of your planning and optimization. With seamless integration of call trace data and direct access to crowdsourced data, your engineers have an unprecedented level of geolocated insights into mobile subscribers’ behavior and coverage experience directly inside their planning solution.

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

How does planning Open RAN networks differ? Up to this point, the RF planning capabilities we have outlined apply equally to traditional architecture networks and Open RAN networks. There are however some specific capabilities a planning tool needs to ensure a successful RF design for an Open RAN network.

Support for Open RAN nodes To accurately represent and model an Open RAN network requires support for Open RAN specific network nodes such as the Radio Unit (RU), the Distributed Unit (DU) and the Centralized Unit (CU). Without this basic support, many of the capabilities we present below are not possible.

How can Planet help?

Since the release of version 7.7, Planet has supported RU, DU and CU Open RAN nodes. This enables Planet to accurately model Open RAN networks and provides the groundwork for many other Open RAN network analysis capabilities.

Open RAN friendly views An RF planning tool has two traditional views which all RF planning engineers will be familiar with. These are the site explorer where the network hierarchy is represented in a tree view and the map view where the cell sites are displayed at their physical co-ordinates on a map. When planning an Open RAN network, it is important that the Open RAN nodes are represented in these views, so engineers have a clear picture of the network.

How can Planet help?

The Planet site explorer includes CU, DU and RU nodes in its hierarchy helping planning engineers understand how everything is connected. Due to the disaggregated nature of Open RAN nodes, perhaps even more important is Planet’s ability to show a logical view of the Open RAN network on the map view. The gives an engineer a user-friendly representation of where all the nodes in the network sit physically and how they are logically connected.

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

Open RAN service area plots The disaggregated nature of the RU, DU and CU Open RAN nodes means there are many options when deciding which DU to connect an RU to and which CU to connect a DU to. An RF planning tool needs to provide a designer with insights to enable them to connect the nodes of the network in the most efficient manner.

Open RAN latency analysis Latency modeling is the critical first step towards offering latency sensitive services such as 5G slicing and URLLC. This is especially important for Open RAN networks where the ability to virtualize nodes and deploy them in the cloud could lead to larger than expected latency numbers.

How can Planet help?

Planet provides the ability to model latency from the core to the UE for Open RAN architectures. Planning engineers can analyze the latency of all paths in the network and a latency best server plot provides a visual representation of the latency across the network. Understanding the latency at all locations in the network helps engineers understand where specific latency sensitive services can be offered, where network latency improvements are needed and where the optimal locations for CUs and DUs are.

As well as the physical locations of all nodes and a logical view of their connections, Planet also provides Best DU and Best CU plots in the map view. This gives the network planner a clear geographical view of DU and CU service areas alongside the physical locations of the RU, DU and CU nodes. With this information, the network planner can determine the optimal way to connect the Open RAN nodes to each other considering aspects such as physical proximity, latency and network capacity requirements.

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

Open RAN planning success story: Rakuten Mobile In October 2019, Rakuten Mobile launched services as Japan’s fourth mobile network operator. Ahead of this launch, the company built and successfully tested the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized cloud-native Open RAN mobile network.

Rakuten Mobile’s engineering teams to utilize advanced planning and design features, devised to efficiently reduce the time and cost of network deployment, through extensive automation and integration. By adopting an Open RAN cloud-native network architecture as well as a comprehensive data-driven approach to planning has, according to Rakuten Mobile, resulted in a 40% CAPEX and 30% OPEX saving when compared to a traditional network architecture and a traditional network planning approach.

For network planning, Rakuten Mobile turned to Infovista to evolve their award-winning Planet software for deployment in Rakuten Mobile’s cloud-native mobile platform. Using a microservices architecture with open Application Programming Interfaces (API), Infovista’s “on-demand” radio network planning solution allowed

RF PLANNING FOR OPEN RAN NETWORKS

Plan your Open RAN network with Planet • Planet ensures you deliver exceptional Open RAN radio designs. 3D simulation technologies, underpinned by machine learning and multiple live data sources, help you create more accurate designs.

• Comprehensive what-if scenario planning ensures maximum return on CAPEX investments and automation of planning tasks increases engineering efficiency, reducing the time-to-market of new designs. • Support for Open RAN nodes and technology-specific features such as Open RAN logical views, service area plots and latency analysis ensure a seamless Open RAN planning experience.

Thank You

We hope you have found this eBook useful. If you would like to learn more about how Infovista and our solutions can help you on your Open RAN journey, please contact us .

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