- TIP (Telecom Infra Project) Silver badge achieved is the 1st for an essential RIC use case based on testing in multi-vendor implementation at i14y Lab
- Deutsche Telekom provided testing requirements, and partners AirHop, Juniper and Keysight provided input back to TIP’s use cases
- RIA OpenRAN certificates and badges with comparability and reliability of results are essential to validate the functionality of RIC xApps and rAPPs
Today, Deutsche Telekom underlined its ongoing commitment to the development of market ready open RAN solutions based on rigorous certification requirements by announcing a TIP Silver badge award. The badge was issued to AirHop Communications’ rApp as part of a multi-vendor implementation for an essential RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) optimization use case (use case 11 5G Physical Cell Identifier (PCI) optimization).
The awarded TIP Silver badge is based on stringent test requirements provided by Deutsche Telekom and test scenarios defined by TIP. It was tested in a multi-vendor setup at the i14y Lab. For the testing, Deutsche Telekom partnered with AirHop Communications, Juniper Networks and Keysight Technologies.
The TIP test, validation and badging process has been set up to ensure open RAN networking component vendors, system integrators and network operators can verify compliance with TIP OpenRAN RIA use cases and test plans. Certification includes successful passing of the rApp functionality tests by achieving the use case requirements.
The RIC brings intelligence, agility and programmability to disaggregated radio access networks (RAN) and enables third-party applications (xApps or rApps) that can perform closed-loop automation and optimization of RAN elements and resources. However, the multi-vendor integration of Non-RT RIC, rApps, and SMO also introduces integration challenges that must be addressed. Validation testing is an important step towards full, end-to-end multi-vendor integration. The value of comparability and reliability of results for operators is to increase confidence during vendor selection as well as to minimize complexity and efforts in subsequent phases, such as system integration and operator-specific acceptance testing.
Operators therefore require validation testing and badging of the functionality, performance, interoperability and security of multi-vendor open RAN solutions, comprised of individual products and components from various vendors to create a working system.
“Operators demand a rigorous process for awarding of trustworthy badges based on reliable assessment and decision making on open RAN components. This TIP Silver Badge was awarded based on a stringent review and assessment at i14Y Lab according to Deutsche Telekom requirements as input to the TIP badging process, said Holger Erkens, Senior Partner Manager at Deutsche Telekom.
“We view this activity as a starting point for further industry measures to raise the benefits of compliance testing and badge comparability and reliability of results. This will help to minimize the integration complexity of open RAN solutions going forward.”
“The successfully executed multi-vendor effort on validating RIC use case performance shows how collaboration on compliance testing can improve trust in leading-edge solutions and verifying functionalities of xApps and rApps. For this activity, AirHop and Juniper brought rApps for the specific use cases to be executed on the Juniper RIC platform. Keysight provided the simulation environment for testing.” Abdel Bagegni, OpenRAN Technical Program Manager, TIP.
TIP RIA sub-group activity
The PCI optimization use case is just one of two use cases (use case 11: PCI Optimization, Use Case 17: RAN Slice SLA Assurance) defined by TIP’s RAN Intelligence & Automation (RIA) sub-group, which are currently being validated for improvements based on stringent operator requirements as part of TIP’s certification process.
For more details, please read the technical paper.