Ericsson Cloud RAN

Ericsson takes leadership in industrializing Open RAN

Ericsson Cloud RAN. Virtually everywhere.

A cloud-native solution adding versatility to a service provider’s 5G RAN network.

Ericsson Cloud RAN (Radio Access Network) is a cloud-native software solution handling compute functionality in the RAN. Cloud RAN is a viable option for communications service providers (CSP) that offers increased flexibility, faster delivery of services, and greater scalability in networks.

Ericsson Cloud RAN enables CSPs to seamlessly evolve towards cloud-native technologies and open network architectures, with the vision that the CSPs can deploy cloud-native networks on any site, any cloud, and any server platform.

What is Cloud RAN?

Cloud RAN is the separation of the RAN baseband software and the RAN baseband hardware. This baseband software can run on any capable commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, with or without integrated accelerators, utilizing cloud-native tools and processes to manage the software and hardware.

This means that baseband RAN software can, in principle, be deployed in many different ways – on cloud hardware on-site, in a CSP-owned data center, or even on a hyperscaler public cloud.

Explore Cloud RAN benefits and how it will co-exist with purpose-built RAN, in this “What’s next for RAN” paper.

Ericsson Open Lab

Ericsson Open Lab provides both virtual and physical lab space environments to share technology and create innovation. Ericsson customers can realize new deployment/use case scenarios, increase automation, and reduce manual intervention, with an initial focus on Ericsson’s Cloud RAN products.

Ericsson-Intel Tech Hub

The Ericsson-Intel Tech Hub focuses on the benefits that Ericsson Cloud RAN and Intel technology can bring to: improving energy efficiency and network performance, reducing time to market, and monetizing new business opportunities such as enterprise applications. The center is based in Ericsson’s D-15 facility in Santa Clara and is already operational.

Collaboration with AMD

The Ericsson-AMD collaboration will see additional processing technologies in the Ericsson Cloud RAN offering. The expanded offering aims to enhance the performance of Cloud RAN and secure high-capacity solutions. The collaboration will enable joint exploration of AMD EPYC processors and T2 Telco accelerator for utilization in Cloud RAN solutions, while also investigating future platform generations of these technologies.

Read more about Ericsson-AMD collaboration.

Collaboration with Dell Technologies

Ericsson is partnering with Dell as a supplier of Dell PowerEdge servers for its Cloud RAN offering. The Ericsson and Dell collaboration will further enable open cloud networks that allow customers to choose their own infrastructure while ensuring telco-grade performance at the far edge.

Read more about Ericsson-Dell collaboration.

Collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

The collaboration with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) brings additional flexibility to Cloud RAN deployments, as Ericsson customers will now also have an option to select HPE workload optimized edge compute based on HPE ProLiant servers and any cloud platform to deploy their Cloud RAN networks.

Read more about the Ericsson-HPE collaboration.

Collaboration with Intel

Ericsson Cloud RAN creates more options for communications service providers and delivers a truly cloud agnostic platform, supported by its long-term strategic partner, Intel. The portfolio will leverage Intel’s compute – across multiple product generations of Intel Xeon Scalable processors and accelerator technology, to enable high-density capacity solutions. This enables both companies to deliver the type of performance seen in the most demanding RAN environments in the world.

Read more about Ericsson-Intel collaboration.

Collaboration with Google Cloud

Ericsson Cloud RAN (Radio Access Network) now runs on Google Distributed Cloud, utilizing the x86-based accelerator stack
The joint solution offers integrated automation and orchestration using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and enables communications service providers (CSPs) with faster delivery of services, increased efficiency, and greater flexibility and optimization opportunities in their networks

Ericsson Cloud RAN can be deployed across all deployment scenarios including existing footprints, also known as ‘bluefield deployments’, with full interworking between the two network architectures. Driving this is Ericsson Cloud Link, which enables value-add network technologies such as Spectrum Sharing, and 5G Carrier Aggregation to operate across platforms.

Blog: Evaluating greenfield, brownfield, and bluefield deployments in Radio Access Networks (RAN)

Go to portfolio

An accelerated path to the future of Cloud RAN

Selecting the right Cloud RAN platform and cloud infrastructure is important and commercial-off-the-shelf server hardware is the foundation. To meet today’s high-performance expectations of a Radio Access Network, with its unique requirements of time-critical processing, Cloud RAN requires hardware acceleration.

Ericsson and Verizon share our thoughts on the best path forward to deliver on energy efficiency, ecosystem support and flexibility at reduced complexity.

Read paper

An accelerated path to the future of Cloud RAN

Designing the most efficient transport network for Cloud RAN

Service providers invest billions of dollars in 5G networks. They are driven by the urge to provide never before seen network performance and services. How to use the 5G-enabled bandwidth to the maximum? What does it take to design the best-optimized transport network for the Cloud RAN?