KDDI has started to deploy 5G vRAN sites in the city of Osaka last month

Wind River announced that its Wind River Studio is being used by Japanese operator KDDI for its O-RAN-compliant 5G virtualized base station, which began commercial deployment last month in Osaka, Japan.

For its 5G virtualized base station, KDDI uses Wind River Studio Cloud Platform technology for an automated configuration system. Also, Wind River Studio Analytics is used to monitor the status of geographically distributed far-edge clouds, the vendor said.

Wind River added that the Studio solution addresses the complex challenges service providers face in deploying and managing geographically distributed, ultra-low latency infrastructure and enables large-scale deployment of 5G virtualized base stations.

The firm noted that this solution addresses the challenges of deploying and managing a physically distributed, cloud-native infrastructure to provide traditional RAN performance in a vRAN/Open RAN deployment.

Meanwhile, the Studio Analytics solutions reduce carrier efforts and improve the efficiency of monitoring and operating the distributed cloud by collecting and analyzing cloud behavioral data to generate insights for decision-making, Wind River added.

Last month, KDDI announced that, in cooperation with Samsung Electronics and Fujitsu, it initiated commercial deployment of O-RAN-compliant 5G Open Virtual Radio Access Network sites in Osaka.

KDDI has been developing O-RAN-compliant 5G Open vRAN sites using Samsung’s virtualized solutions. For the new sites, KDDI updated the software of an O-RAN-compliant 5G Open vRAN site it had successfully turned on in February 2022. Samsung’s 5G virtualized CU (vCU) and virtualized DU (vDU) and Fujitsu’s radio units are interconnected with an open interface. Also, wireless controllers are equipped with fully-virtualized RAN software on general-purpose servers to realize network functions, the Japanese telco said.

KDDI also said that core functions are implemented as software to enable flexible and efficient management of network resources. KDDI further updated the software of the new sites to support the 5G NSA solution connected to existing 4G sites and functions that were realized in conventional sites using dedicated equipment including Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO).

In addition, KDDI constructed a Zero Touch Provisioning system to automate configuration tasks when the base stations start operating. The system automates the setup of servers and virtualized platforms from different vendors and contributes to rapid base station deployment nationwide, including in rural areas. Based on the knowledge gained from its operation in Osaka City, the parties aim to expand the scope of application of this system in 2024 to realize full-scale deployment of Open vRAN sites.

Earlier this month, Samsung Electronics announced the company has been selected by KDDI to provide its cloud-native 5G Standalone (SA) core for the operator’s commercial network across Japan.

Samsung’s 5G core solution supports both 4G and 5G networks and the Korean vendor highlighted that it has features meant ensure the “stability and reliability of the network,” such as geo-redundancy support and an overload control feature to counteract sudden traffic spikes. For geographic redundant deployment, Samsung and KDDI will operate multiple cores in various locations, with each core ready to pick up loads in case one of the other, active cores becomes unavailable.

Samsung noted that the Standalone architecture will enable KDDI to create an independent 5G network, enabling lower latency capabilities that are essential to high-performance use cases such as smart factories, automated vehicles, cloud-based online gaming and multi-camera live streaming at sporting events.

Samsung’s 5G core will also enable KDDI to optimize network slicing, the vendor added.