Infovista today announced support for 5G RedCap network planning with the launch of thelatest version of its Al-powered RF planning solution, Infovista Planet. For the first timeoperators’network planning teams can now include 3GPP-compliant 5G RedCap devicesas part of their analysis and simulation of 5G Standalone networks. Operators arecurrently in the early network planning stages of 5G RedCap, with the GSA recentlyreporting that of the 126 mobile operators investing in 5G Standalone today, 17 are in theprocess of investing in 5G RedCap for emerging use cases and applications.

Infovista Planet is also enhanced with market-leading capabilities for planning 5G FixedWireless Access(FWA)coverage and capacity, and can now perform Monte Carlosimulations on both standalone FWA networks and mixed trafic consisting of FWA CPESmobile UEs and RedCap devices. Leveraging Infovista's expertise in line-of-sight (LOSmodeling from its microwave backhaul modeling tool Ellipse, Planet now also includes fullsite-to-FWA subscriber analysis for one-to-many and many-to-many scenarios.

The latest release of Planet AlM, Infovista's flagship Al-powered RF propagation modeladds further enhancements to the Planet RF planning capabilities, including rooftoppropagation and the ability to model the coverage on all rooftops in the same layer. Thesenew capabilities enable operators' network engineers to determine which sites an FWAsubscriber has line of sight to and identify FWA CPE rooftop mounting optionssignifcantly improving the speed, accuracy and, ultimately, the proftability of FWA servicerollout.

Building on Planet's existing capabilities for Open RAN planning, the solution nowincludes new network views, with its map view and site explorer now able to display ORAN nodes and their logical relationships. New best server layer options visualize 5Garchitectures including Best DU, Best CU/BBU and Best MEC, enabling network plannersto quickly and accurately identify service areas.

Regis Lerbour, VP Product, RAN Engineering and Testing, at Infovista said: “The success ofany mobile network starts with the integrity and accuracy of its radio access networkdesign. However, with new technologies such as 5G RedCap and new coverage modelssuch as FWA, the 5G network planning challenge is becoming ever more complex. Theability to model the RF parameters, simulate the full range of devices and services, andvisualize network KPIs create a complexity that only an Al-powered RF planning solutioncan deliver, The release of Planet 7.10 is a significant milestone for the industry as it movesfrom investmentdeployment of new 5G standalone networks.”