NEC : and Fujitsu to develop technologies for interoperability testing between 5G base station equipment in laboratories in the U.K. and the U.S.

With the start of 5G commercial services in various countries, post 5G (*2) with enhanced functions such as ultra-low latency and multiple simultaneous connections is expected to be used in a variety of industries, such as automobile factories. It is expected that the technologies that realize these functions will serve as the core of Japan's competitiveness.

In recent years, base station equipment has become more open due to O-RAN fronthaul interface specifications (*3) formulated by the O-RAN Alliance (*4), and it is becoming possible to connect to RUs (radio units) and CUs / DUs (central units / distributed units) from a variety of vendors. However, in order to quickly verify interoperability between different vendors' equipment, it is necessary to establish a verification process, develop tools that can be used in common, and to develop a verification environment.

Under these circumstances, NEDO commissioned NEC and Fujitsu to conduct R&D on assessment and verification technologies for interoperability between base station equipment in the 'Post 5G Infrastructure Enhancement R&D Project,' which is scheduled to run from FY2020 to FY2023. In response, NEC and Fujitsu are building an environment and developing technologies to assess and verify the interoperability of different vendors' equipment and the impact of such connections on the entire network.

NEC and Fujitsu have begun developing technologies to verify base station equipment interoperability at their respective facilities in the U.K and the U.S. NEC is conducting trials at its Open RAN laboratory in NEC Europe Ltd., London, U.K., while Fujitsu is doing so at its laboratory hosted at Fujitsu Network Communications, Inc., a Fujitsu group company in the United States.