Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/39660-faststream-showcases-the-features-of-customizable-oran-ru-platform-at-mwc-2023-barcelona
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Faststream Showcases the Features of Customizable ORAN RU Platform at MWC 2023 Barcelona

February 17, 2023

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, being held  February 28 to March 3, Faststream will be showcasing the features of their 5G radio unit (RU) platform, in Hall 5, Stand #5D39.

Firms all over the world are eager to invest in 5G technology because of its enormous potential for supporting much higher bandwidth and low latency, providing ultra-high speed experiences, connecting billions of objects around the world to the internet and enabling immense virtual reality experiences.

Faststream brings a customizable O-RAN RU platform for 5G deployments, that tackles the crucial power consumption and cost issues of fifth-generation networks and makes substantial improvements in size and weight. The solution enables the deployment of 5G systems with configurable models to upgrade the system without the need to replace hardware components, offering a solution to match the evolving requirements of technology and facilitate the client with the most recent technological advancements. The RU platform has a wide range of features and capabilities, including advanced modulation schemes, beamforming and support for multiple frequency bands.

“Faststream's 5G RU platform consists of a unique digital front-end (DFE)/power amplifier (PA) combination delivering high power efficiency covering all sub-6 GHz frequency bands in time-division duplexing (TDD) and frequency division duplexing (FDD) customizable to 4 to 64 TRX, with FPGA/ASIC options for 7.2x O-RAN baseband/low PHY and massive MIMO RF front-end,” said Vinay Bansal, chief executive officer at Faststream Technologies.

“Our algorithm team works closely with leading PA vendors to develop the most effective linearized alternatives for the most recent PA technologies leading to reduction in development time while providing the most sophisticated crest factor reduction (CFR) and PA/digital-pre-distortion (DPD) pairing for your designs across band and power variations,” commented Dr. Jayanta Biswas, vice president of engineering at Faststream Technologies.


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Faststream’s 5G O-RAN RU platform includes RF front-end, digital front-end, lower PHY baseband processing and synchronization and fronthaul transport, running on the Intel® advanced node AGF014 Agilex™ FPGA.

For communication with base station controllers (CU/DU), FST 5G RU employs O-RAN standard specifications for the fronthaul interface. Both fiber and Ethernet may be used to provide the fronthaul link, which is based on the eCPRI. This enables the establishment of a flexible network with an O-RAN configuration by connecting the base station controllers from different vendors that conform to this specification.

The solution combines hardened DFE blocks with configurable logic lower PHY, CFR and DPD for mass 5G base station deployment. With the evolution of wireless communication standards, 5G NR signal bandwidth has exceeded 200 MHz. The company empowers the 5G base station manufacturers with its innovative DPD + CFR algorithm and helps them to solve the RF bottleneck problem. The solution covers 5G NR use cases, including those for the low, mid and high band spectrums and covers various other RF applications, such as phased array radar and communications test equipment.