The Nokia Radio Cloud is said to help operators allocate processing capacity from almost anywhere in the network, such as an adjacent cell or a centralised data centre, to where it’s needed most for capacity. The solution is designed to support distributed and centralised deployment, or a combination of both.
The company claims the multi-layer architecture is pioneering the use of ethernet fronthaul and any combination of distributed and centralised deployments.
“This is the first radio cloud architecture that offers a layered approach with different deployment models to optimise performance by enabling basic capacity to be built near cell sites, and with peak capacity in the data centre being redirected to follow traffic demand,” said Henri Tervonen, vice president of mobile broadband architecture at Nokia Networks.
“Continuing the evolution from Nokia Single RAN and Nokia Centralised RAN, our Radio Cloud network architecture is a tremendous platform to prepare for upcoming 5G for core and radio," he added.
Nokia also announced the launch of a cloud security solution (Nokia Cloud Security Director) and the commercial availability of its Cloud Evolved Packet Core (EPC). The company said the EPC and Nokia Cloud Network Director can be used to orchestrate virtualised network functions like VoLTE.
The radio cloud will be commercialised from early 2016.
