Hello Experts.
Joint Initiative Aimed at Enabling Telcos to Build High-Performing, Efficient and Completely Virtualized 5G Radio Access Networks
“Complete RAN on Cloud” means RU on cloud as well?
RU cannot be cloudified.
Yes earlier not.
May be research ongoing as mentioned in article Complete RAN network.
Excuse me, but this news date is 21st October 2019 which is more than 4 years back and I didn’t hear about any collaboration between Ericsson and Nvidia in GPU to enhance the RAN.
The only collaboration I know for Ericsson is with Intel.
Please, could anyone share any updated news on this collaboration between Ericsson and Nvidia?
I think they only means CU/DU and not RU.
RF transmission needs antenna arrays and elements.
It transmits real analog power. How can it be virtualised?
By the way, any collaboration in vRAN means CU and DU only, no virtualization for RU at all.
Thanks for highlighting it! 
I saw it only today on LinkedIn…
You are most welcome 
That’s why, I am trying to check the news date as I had a similar experience before with LinkedIn, you are not the first one 
It is impossible for Radio be virtualized (meaning how radio signal can be virtualized?).
All idea of could and virtualization is on DU/CU and Core side.
RU is still RU …
In summary: complete RAN means DU and CU only. RU is not to be cloudified soon
Virtualization of RU is on the future topics of ORAN Alliance, but not for the time being.
It could be functionality of RU in terms of chip but not RF antenna side.
Antenna will be there as you need some HW to transmit the signals, but RU processing functions can be done separately.
But again this is for the future not now at all.
No vendor or chip manufacturer is discussing this topic for the time being.
Front end will still remain with vendors for signal processing after and before antenna.
Vendors need to have SDR based functionality before moving to cloud-native RAN till front end.
Excuse me, but why SDR is mandatory before going to Cloud-Native?
No. That was not meant.
In order to harness full potential of cloud native deployment, I see its efficiency in SDR.
The RRU will not be able to leverage the software-based features and flexibility of the SDR, such as dynamic spectrum allocation, adaptive modulation, and interoperability with different radio standards.
Therefore, bypassing the SDR based implementation may reduce the benefits of cloud native RAN.
Thanks for the clarification.
Totally agree with you that SDR will increase the RU efficiency, however as the Cloud-native definition is subjected to many opinions, so I prefer in such cases to see the definition from standard bodies such as CNCF and in its definition to Cloud-native, it includes many technologies that should exist to say this is a Cloud-native architecture such as microservices, immutable infrastructure, containers, orchestration, Open APIs, service mesh, and CI/CD.
So, nothing was related to SDR at all, although it can increase the efficiency of the RU, but this has no relation to the cloud concept as RU is not in our account for the cloud, at least for the current time.
And all these technologies will be in the DU and CU.
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Thanks!
As you can see, the CNCF definition of cloud native focuses on the software architecture and the development and deployment processes, rather than the hardware or the radio interface.
My personal focus is cloud native RAN.
SDR can enable more software-based features and flexibility in the radio layer, which can complement and leverage the cloud native technologies in the DU and CU layers and also can be thought of edge computing scenario.
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