News | February 27, 2023

MWC Barcelona 2023: Faststream's 5G RU Platform Addresses The Growing Private And Public Network Opportunities

Source: Faststream Technologies

Firms all over the world are keen to invest in revolutionary technology such as 5G, which has created vast business opportunities owing to its enormous potential of supporting much higher bandwidth and low latency, providing ultra-high speed experiences, connecting billions of objects around the globe to the internet, and enabling immense virtual reality experiences.

5G presents several design challenges as it promises to offer the benefits with less power, low cost and with ultra-reliability. To meet the design challenges and the promises offered by 5G communication technology and to bring in new business opportunities, Faststream Technologies provides solution with its customizable and dynamically reconfigurable RU platform supporting a bandwidth of 200 MHz for meeting the second-wave 5G NR requirements.

Digital Frontend or DFE has replaced analog signal processing part in the software defend radio which incorporates most of the challenging modules of the 5G technologies such as Crest Factor Reduction (CFR), Digital Pre-Distorter (DPD), and beamforming to support massive MIMO architecture.

Faststream’s new DFE SoC combines hardened Digital Front End (DFE) blocks with adaptive logic DFE solution incorporating CFR, DPD, an integrated direct RF sampling transceiver and enables more processing per channel, greater bandwidth, and greater integration while remaining cost-effective for 5G deployments.

Our DFE’s unique combination of standard-compliant hard IP and configurable logic enable customers to customize RU to meet changing market requirements. The solution covers 5G NR use cases, including those for the low, mid, and high band spectrums and various other RF applications, such as phased array radar and communications test equipment.

Faststream’s new RU can be deployed in Category A or Category B configuration, with the flexibility to address radio access network architectures while delivering -50 dBc or less ACLR performance. Each RU includes an eFPGA as well as a transceiver with built-in Crest Factor Reduction (CFR) and Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD). The role of CFR is very critical in achieving -50 dBc ACPR performance for both TDD and FDD while maintaining EVM within 3.5%.

5G O-RAN RU Platform

The typical 5G O-RAN Radio Unit base station platform includes

RF Front End: The major components of RF Front End in 5G O-RAN are

  • Antenna arrays
  • Power Amplifiers (PA)
  • Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA)
  • Band pass filters
  • Digital to Analog Converters (DAC)
  • Analog to Digital Converters (ADC)

Digital Front End: The major components of the 5G RU Digital Front End includes

Lower PHY Baseband Processing: Lower PHY layer includes functions of

  • FFT/iFFT
  • CP addition and Removal
  • PRACH filtering
  • Digital beamforming

Fronthaul Transport: Fronthaul connection synchronization is accomplished using GPS/PTP (IEEE 1588) modules. Both fiber and Ethernet may be used to provide the fronthaul link between RU and DU, which is based on the eCPRI.

Highlights of our Customizable O-RU Platform

Fully Hardened Radio Subsystem Front End

  • Up to 7.125 GHz RF Bandwidth.
  • 100 MHz to 200 MHz iBW for 4T4R supporting FR1 radio DFE.
  • 5G NR TDD and FDD TM3.1 and TM3.1a support with 4T4R configuration and also Support various Communication standards, 3G / LTE / NR.
  • Crest Factor Reduction module with PAPR < 8 dB for 5G FDD and TDD Traffic.
  • Digital Predistorter with ACPR < -50 dBc, EVM < 3.5% for 5G FDD and TDD Traffic.
  • DPD+PA testing is carried out on a power amplifier with a gain of 36 dBm and an ACPR of -29 dBc; our approach provides a significant enhancement in the efficiency of PA with an ACPR less than -50 dBc, i.e. about 21 dBc improvement.
  • Half the power of Xilinx RFSoC Gen 3 for radio applications.
  • Make the base station meet or even exceed 3GPP requirements.
  • Optimize the power consumption of the base station and enhance the core competitiveness of the product.
  • Flexible and scalable DFE with Flexibility to enhance hardened IP with adaptive logic.

Multi-Band, Multi-Mode Operation for Flexibility and Scalability

  • Up to 5 component carriers for 100 MHz and 8 component carriers for 200 MHz per antenna path.
  • 100 MHz to 200 MHz iBW support enables RAN sharing.
  • Ability to support multi-mode, multi-band radios with a single device.

Complete Adaptive SoC for Fully Software-Defined Radio

  • Arm® processing subsystem for DFE configuration and control.
  • Configurable logic for differentiation and future market requirements.
  • 10G transceivers with RS-FEC for CPRI, eCPRI, and ORAN FH interfaces.
  • 10G Ethernet integrated cores.