Xilinx And Mavenir Join Forces On Bleeding-Edge 4G/5G Open RAN Massive MIMO Portfolio

Xilinx and Mavenir have just announced a new collaboration in an effort to bring a unified 4G/5G Open RAN Massive MIMO portfolio to market, to accelerate the adoption of Open RAN deployments worldwide. The collaboration has already resulted in the successful completion of an end-to-end integration of a first-generation Massive MIMO (mMIMO) Open RAN (O-RAN) solution at Mavenir’s Lab in Bangalore, India.

According to the companies, the integration addressed multiple deployment scenarios and was evaluated by six leading, global communication service providers (CSPs). Mavenir delivered the Virtualized RAN (vRAN) support for mMIMO, including the Core Network, Centralized Unit and Distributed Unit, and Xilinx provided the Category-B O-RAN Radio Unit. 

“This integration demonstrates an efficient Open RAN massive MIMO solution to achieve diversification of the telecommunications supply chain,” says Pardeep Kohli, President and CEO, Mavenir. “This is an important milestone in the delivery of open and interoperable interfaces enabling the deployment of mMIMO in high density, high mobile traffic metro areas.”

Open RAN, or O-RAN, is important to CSPs and the wider market for a number of reasons. The overarching goal and mission of the Open RAN project is to disaggregate the Radio Unit (RU), Distributed Unit (DU), and Centralized Unit (CU) in a radio access network and open the protocols and interfaces between them, to allow mobile network operators to deploy equipment from different manufacturers, while at the same time ensuring compatibility and interoperability.

Although this news just hit the wire, Xilinx and Mavenir have been working together for years. In fact, according to the companies, more than 80% of the O-RAN radios Mavenir has previously worked on already feature some Xilinx technology.

“We were early proponents of Open RAN technology along with Mavenir and actively led in standards development in the industry through many field trials around the world,” said Liam Madden, executive vice president and general manager, Wired and Wireless Group at Xilinx. “With the investment we have done on our market-leading wireless radio technology and massive MIMO R&D, we are excited to collaborate with Mavenir to bring our collective technology and radio system expertise together that will accelerate the deployment of market leading 5G O-RAN massive MIMO radio solutions.”

Xilinx and Mavenir plan to announce a full portfolio of O-RAN mMIMO products by the end of the year. Although deep technical details are scarce due to the competitive nature of the market, the first product coming down the pipeline is a mMIMO 64TRX joint solution, that is expected to be arrive sometime in Q4 of this year. It will feature Mavenir’s end-to-end software and system integration with a custom adaptive Xilinx RF-SOC DFE and 7nm Versal AI solution with advanced beamforming IP. The companies are shooting for a 400MHz Instantaneous Bandwidth (IBW) target with support for multi-carrier aggregation, with ASIC-class power and performance, in similar sub-25kg form factors to some existing solutions, but with the added benefit of future adaptability for new/emerging beam forming algorithms and services.

Xilinx and Mavenir will enable multiple North American operators initially, but quickly plan to address the needs of additional operators worldwide. The full specification details for the complete O-RAN mMINO portfolio will be revealed later in the second half on this year.