Overlooked? Not Anymore
With all the buzz about IoT, 5G, and digital transformation, a little spotlight has been given to a less glamorous but equally critical technology called time synchronization. Time synchronization across networks is not a new invention. Various standards and protocols of time synchronization have been around for decades, for radio broadcasts, telecommunications, and measurement equipment.
RAN. Legacy.
Without time sync, all the benefits promised by the latest technologies will fail to materialize. All the edge devices on-premises, like the other elements within the network infrastructure, must conform to network standards to operate, especially in terms of bandwidth and latency. Let’s assume it operates like a symphony orchestra with all the musicians playing different instruments and being led by one single conductor. Likewise, the appliances within the network must ‘sing together’ to play out a great symphony under perfect orchestration.
5G O-RAN – What’s Different?
It is even more so for the evolving 5G O-RAN network architecture. Unlike traditional network architecture, where edge devices ‘play out in one premise and led by one conductor’, we now have a modern concert, coming in hybrid forms of digital music plus legacy music band, and an AI singer-human vocal duet, in multiple sites across time zone simultaneously. Translating back into tech language, all on-premise edge devices now must have an identical single reference of the clock, and that is time sync.
O-RAN maintains network timing distribution as the preferred approach within the fronthaul network. Therefore, time and frequency synchronization must be distributed to O-DU and O-RU for effective O-RAN network operation.
Spick and Span Hardware
NEXCOM’s FTA 5180, based on O-RAN alliance specification, is designed to be the next generation network equipment. Powered by Intel® Xeon® D-1700 processor, it features ten high-bandwidth Ethernet ports, delivers excellent performance per watt, and PoE++ functionality. Optional support of FWA connectivity, including Wi-Fi 6 and 5G, enables seamless connectivity to multiple devices. FTA 5180 can be deployed across diverse application scenarios and use cases, including 5G public and private networks.
Fronthaul Enablement
To present FTA 5180’s adaptability for 5G fronthaul, multiple tests were conducted at the Intel 5G Innovation Center in Taipei, including PTP clock offset and wire bandwidth performance tests.
The 5G downlink performance of FTA 5180 reached 1.51Gb/s which is higher than the threshold value. The IEEE 1588 PTP clock offset requirements to pass the test were less than 100ns between the PTP Hardware Clock server and FTA 5180. The result of 29.3ns reveals that the measurement average of FTA 5180 is significantly better.
To read more about the test results, please visit: https://www.nexcom.com/news/Detail/delivering-high-accuracy-ptp-synchronization-for-5g-o-ran-fronthaul-deployments?utm_source=INBblog&utm_medium=WP&utm_campaign=MWC-2023
Summary
The reading significantly surpassed threshold limits, proving that FTA 5180 is able to bring high throughput and improved network efficiency to existing network infrastructure.
To learn more about FTA 5180 and other displayed solutions, visit us at MWC Barcelona 2023, in Hall 5, Booth 5A61.