Rakuten Mobile and Fujitsu subsidiary 1Finity have announced an open radio access network (RAN) collaboration to deploy massive multiple-input, multiple-output (mMIMO) radios.
The radio units (RUs) were designed by Fujitsu’s networking arm for full-scale deployment in Japan and are based on Qualcomm Dragonwing QRU100 platforms, following in the footsteps of Qualcomm-based RAN deployments from the likes of Verizon.
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Driving Rakuten Mobile’s cloud-native and fully virtualized Open RAN network, the 1Finity mMIMO Open RAN RU (O-RU) platform uses beamforming technology to dynamically generate highly focused beams toward user devices in real time.
Rakuten Mobile plans to deploy the 1Finity 32A37 mMIMO O-RU operating in the 3.7 GHz band, which will interface with Rakuten Symphony’s centralized unit (CU) and distributed unit (DU) through the Open RAN open fronthaul interface. The rollout was touted as enhancing the existing network infrastructure supported by 1Finity 44R21 Open RAN RUs.
“Rakuten Mobile will continue to leverage our expertise in building fully virtualized, cloud-native mobile networks compatible with Open RAN in Japan, proceeding with the rapid deployment of 5G sub-6 base stations and expanding our service areas,” Sudhakar Pandey, head of Rakuten Mobile’s RAN department, explained. “The low power consumption and high performance of the 1Finity radio platform is well-suited to help us achieve our sustainable connectivity vision.”
“The Dragonwing QRU100 Platform helps enable operators to achieve greater network capacity, coverage, and energy efficiency,” added Arun Handoo, senior director for product management at Qualcomm Technologies. “This collaboration has the potential to drive innovation in virtualized, cloud-native mobile networks while enabling operators to achieve greater cost efficiency in 5G infrastructure.”
The Rakuten Mobile partnership is the latest 1Finity venture following its spin-out from Fujitsu last summer. Since then, the Japanese unit has powered Open RAN projects for AT&T.
Most recently, its American arm opened a California-based hub for open networking initiatives throughout the Americas, set up to validate interoperability testing across diverse vendor technologies.
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