95% of Open RAN operators responding to a recent Heavy Reading survey said that they’re interested in the potential of AI-RAN. Understandably, these operators want to maximize the value of their 5G and AI-RAN infrastructure investments.
I’m Kai Mao, Head of AI-RAN strategy for Fujitsu’s Network Business, here for an open dialogue about how AI-RAN has the potential to be the next big, positive, disruption in operator networks.
AI-RAN – A new paradigm that could be the path to new revenue for 5G operators
5G has delivered capacity and throughput improvements but it has yet to realize the anticipated new market and revenue potential to cover the tremendous cost of deployment.
AI-RAN is a new paradigm where RAN and AI share a common infrastructure to improve network performance, operations, and revenue potential for operators.
Going beyond virtualization with “softwarized” RAN
The key is to go beyond typical virtualization removing the need for specialized RAN hardware. The RAN baseband, or CU/DU, is fully “softwarized,” and becomes just another workload. A workload that runs on common server infrastructure, like any other application.
Fujitsu’s Open vRAN software is the world’s first commercial-grade solution to be fully softwarized.
Where can AI-RAN add value?
Fujitsu is a member of the AI-RAN Alliance, which has categorized AI-RAN’s value as follows:
- AI and RAN
- AI for RAN
- AI on RAN.
AI and RAN
First is AI and RAN, where the same compute infrastructure is used for both AI and RAN workloads. This enables operational agility, scalability, availability, and automation, as well as benefits from cloud-driven economies of scale. These are the same benefits that cloud providers have been realizing for decades.
Additionally, AI and RAN maximizes pooling gains and enables new monetization opportunities for under-utilized RAN capacity.
AI for RAN
With AI for RAN, AI adds new intelligence to the implementation and operation of RAN, by incorporating AI and GPU acceleration directly into the data-plane and network level. This has the potential to increase bits/Hz and overall performance.
AI on RAN
AI on RAN enables innovation and next-generation AI applications that are network aware. These applications can offer new services based on network latency, location, mobility, and reliability to fulfill their service requirements and deliver new features.
AI RAN will catalyze 5G market growth and help realize the originally anticipated revenue opportunities.
Leadership over multiple RAN generations
After 25 years’ leadership, over several RAN technology generations, utilizing our extensive AI research, plus four years’ work on AI-RAN, Fujitsu has built a unique understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
With actual commercial and field deployment experience in AI-RAN, Fujitsu is in a pioneering position with our carrier grade Open vRAN software.
We believe AI-RAN is key to the future of operator competitiveness and would love to have folks talk to us, to collaborate and discover how to innovate with our AI-RAN solutions.
