Keysight Technologies, Cambridge Industries Group Accomplish Inter-Operability Testing of O-RAN Radio Units

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Keysight Technologies, Inc., a leading technology company that helps enterprises, service providers and governments accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, announces inter-operability development testing (IODT) of O-RAN radio units (O-RUs) in collaboration with Cambridge Industries Group (CIG), a leading original design manufacturer (ODM), headquartered in Shanghai, China.

The testing was accomplished using CIG’s O-RU and Keysight’s Open RAN Studio, signal source and analyzer solutions to create an environment for 5G new radio (NR) modulation analysis. As a result, CIG and other vendors of O-RUs can accelerate design verification of products based on specifications set by the O-RAN Alliance. CIG is part of a network infrastructure ecosystem that is using O-RAN fronthaul interfaces to unlock the full potential of an open RAN architecture.

“We rely on partners such as Keysight to effectively develop and validate open RAN standards-based network elements, including small cells and O-RAN compliant radio and distributed units,” said Haibo Zhao, founder, chief technology officer (CTO) at CIG. “Working with Keysight, with cross-domain expertise, enables CIG to derive insights critical in the design and manufacturing of a flexible infrastructure that serves diverse use cases for consumers and vertical industries.”

Keysight, the first test vendor to launch O-RAN distributed unit (O-DU) emulation software for validating O-RAN compliant O-RUs, has helped speed development of conformance validation and verification of interoperability between O-RUs and O-DUs. Keysight’s Open RAN Studio integrates with the company’s PathWave signal generation and vector signal analysis (VSA) software for advanced modulation analysis of signal and radio performance.

“Together with key partners such as CIG, we are advancing the development of a disaggregated, virtualized network architecture based on O-RAN specifications,” said Giampaolo Tardioli, vice president of Keysight and general manager of Keysight's Network Access Group. “The future of pervasive wireless connectivity requires end-to-end performance verification of 5G network elements across multiple domains including, radio frequency (RF), mmWave and O-RAN protocol.”