Viavi supports China Mobile’s specific technologies and aggressive roadmap with advanced test solutions, making the company a preferred vendor of the Chinese telco.
For the project, Viavi will provide test and measurement hardware, as well as software to China Mobile and other equipment manufacturers to support the development of Slicing Packet Network (SPN) with FlexE interface that the technology carrier is developing for 5G transport.
“Viavi has been honoured to collaborate with China Mobile on analysing 5G network scenarios and proposing technology strategy. In order to realize China Mobile’s vision of introducing 5G service by the end of 2019, principal technologies including SPN for transport must be standardized by the ITU-T. We have advanced our test technology to meet this objective, and our solutions are ready to support the China Mobile ecosystem of partners to deliver interoperable network infrastructure,” said Oleg Khaykin, president and chief executive officer of Viavi Solutions.
Through its analysis of 5G transport network requirements, China Mobile has found that SPN is optimal technology to support next-generation architecture, bandwidth, traffic model, network slicing, latency and time synchronization. Flexible Ethernet is used in conjunction with SPN to create smaller Ethernet channels from a larger one, or vice versa, to guarantee quality of service and isolation between slices at the transport layer. In addition, China Mobile has requested that the International Telecommunication Union standardise SPN.
Viavi will continue to support China Mobile by delivering a SPN test platform creating a common foundation for network equipment manufacturers, chip developers and transceiver vendors to validate products based on this technology.
In January of this year, Yang Zhiqiang, deputy general manager of China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI) met with Khaykin, Tom Fawcett, vice president and general manager of the lab & production business unit, Viavi Solutions, to her offices for strategic meetings on 5G planning prior to the announcement. The CMRI is a technical organization within the China Mobile group and is responsible for new technology research, standardization, and qualification of infrastructure equipment—including testing protocols.
Viavi launched CPRIAdvisor in June of last year, it’s a remote radio frequency (RF) spectrum monitoring system that addresses a wide range of antenna deployment options in heterogeneous networks. The monitoring system can support a macro cell with a smaller number of fronthaul fibre links; a large centralized radio access network (C-RAN) or distributed antenna system (DAS) with hundreds of fronthaul links.
