Mavenir, NEC deploy massive MIMO antenna tech on Orange’s 5G standalone experimental network
NEC Corporation and Mavenir have deployed massive MIMO antenna technology on Orange’s 5G standalone experimental network at the Orange Gardens near Paris, France.
MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) is a wireless communications antenna technology that employs multiple antennas at both the source (transmitter) and the receiver. Having antennas at each end of the communications circuit can reduce errors, improve data speed and heighten the capacity of radio transmissions. This is accomplished by allowing data to travel over multiple signal paths simultaneously.
The successful open RAN deployment of massive MIMO is part of the extension of project Pikeo. Last year, Orange launched project Pikeo — a cloud-based and automated 5G standalone experimental network with real users for next-gen agile networks.
“Mavenir and NEC’s successful Open RAN deployment of mMIMO on Orange’s Innovation 5G SA experimental network is a major stepping stone on the road towards Open RAN deployments and illustrates Orange’s commitment to supporting the development of multi-vendor Open RAN solutions with an innovative partner,” said Arnaud Vamparys, SVP RANs and Microwaves at Orange.
Mavenir’s cloud-based Open vRAN software was deployed on Orange’s cloud infrastructure with NEC’s 32T32R mMIMO AAU to deliver increased capacity and improved coverage. Interoperability between radios and virtualized distributed units (vDUs) using the O-RAN Alliance Open Fronthaul Interface is critical to Open RAN’s potential to reduce network complexity and stop vendor lock-in.
“Deploying 5G SA mMIMO is a significant milestone in developing Open RAN and transitioning from virtualized to cloudified networks,” said Hubert de Pesquidoux, executive chairman of Mavenir. “We are very proud of our continuing collaboration with Orange, NEC and other companies that are proving the potential of the multi-vendor, cloud-native, standards-based approach.”
Article Topics
5G | antenna | cellular wireless | Mavenir | MIMO | NEC | Orange | standalone
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