The Overview
AMD announced that its Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC has enabled the development of multiple Evenstar radio units (RUs) to expand 4G/5G global mobile network infrastructure. The Evenstar program, led by Meta Connectivity, is a collaborative initiative between operators and technology partners to build adaptable, efficient, and metaverse-ready radio-access-network (RAN) reference designs for 4G and 5G networks in the Open RAN ecosystem.
Who Needs It & Why?
The Evenstar RU launch comes as a bandwidth explosion is overwhelming wireless networks. As the demand for internet connectivity continues to grow at a rapid pace, the infrastructure that supports it needs to keep pace and improve. According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, year-on-year data growth on wireless networks is at 46%.
Moreover, interest in Open RAN infrastructure is slowly but surely growing. According to the Dell'Oro Group, Open RAN revenues will account for about 15% of the overall 2G-5G RAN market by 2026. AMD's Evenstar RUs come at an opportune moment when burgeoning bandwidth requirements are being met with the interoperability of Open RAN as an option for network providers looking to build out their infrastructure.
The figure shows how Open RAN is critical to making metaverse-ready networks a reality. At left is the structure of today's single-vendor, fully integrated RANs, which are rife with proprietary interfaces. Open RAN architectures require open interfaces as seen at right in the figure. The goal of a multi-vendor, disaggregated RAN accomplishes a few things. For one, it brings compute power closer to users and allows data to be broken out locally. Over-the-air bandwidth is optimized. Further, it opens more opportunities for innovation in connectivity and can improve network economics.
Under the Hood
Evenstar RUs with the Xilinx Zynq RFSoC architecture provide the flexibility to meet a wide range of requirements, including 4G/5G, mmWave, and sub-6 GHz using the same foundational hardware. The ability to leverage the platform and address diverse radio configurations and emerging standards enables radio vendors to react quickly to new market opportunities.
5G radios require solutions that not only meet bandwidth, power, and cost efficiencies for widespread deployment, but must also scale for evolving 5G standards such as Open RAN as well as new and disruptive 5G business models. Evenstar RUs powered by Xilinx Zynq RFSoC technology are said to offer operators greater choice and flexibility when building mobile networks.