Mavenir Supports O-RAN ALLIANCE Report On Spectrum Aggregation In Multi-vendor Deployments

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 30 (Bernama) -- Mavenir, the cloud-native network infrastructure provider building the future of networks, announced the publication of a new technical report by the O-RAN ALLIANCE, ‘Spectrum Aggregation for Multi-Vendor Deployments’.

The report evaluates multiple spectrum aggregation techniques and proposes an open interface specification support between Distributed Units (DUs) for carrier aggregation in multi-vendor deployments, according to a statement.

Mavenir Senior Vice President, Access Technologies and rapporteur for the technical report, Dr Sridhar Rajagopal said this report, with its welcome set of recommendations on multi-vendor carrier aggregation, could not come at a more pivotal time for the Open radio access network (RAN) as spectrum discussions continue for expanding 5G deployments and with 6G on the horizon.

“Standardising the interface between DUs for multi-vendor carrier aggregation will remove single vendor stickiness and will be a game changer for Open RAN,” he said.

The O-RAN ALLIANCE report, which was initiated and led by Mavenir, sets out the practical scenarios for spectrum aggregation across equipment from multiple network equipment vendors comparing different approaches and includes a recommendation for specification development for carrier aggregation in multi-vendor RAN deployment.

The carrier aggregation solution using an open interface between DUs has gathered significant support from operators and vendors to pursue specification development within the O-RAN ALLIANCE.

Carrier aggregation across available spectrum is one of the key considerations by operators to maximise bandwidth, boost throughput, and improve network performance. An operator obtains new spectrum during regulatory spectrum sale over time.

In such a situation, there is a strong desire by the operator to combine the new spectrum with their existing spectrum using carrier aggregation. However, there is no open standardised interface that exists today for carrier aggregation between two vendors, creating vendor stickiness to operators for all future spectrum expansions.

Thus, operators are forced to rely on their incumbents for spectrum expansion, losing negotiating power and control over network evolution while becoming dependent on features, performance and timelines as dictated by their incumbents.

An open specification for multi-vendor carrier aggregation support will openup the 5G eco-system further and provide a pathway for new low-latency features and services for 6G by enabling real-time communication between DUs that does not exist today.

-- BERNAMA