CableLabs has collaborated with the Facebook-led open-source hardware group Telecom Infra Project (TIP) to open a TIP Community Lab at its headquarters in Louisville, Colo.
TIP was founded in February 2016 and has 500 member companies, including Adtran, T-Mobile, Broadcom, CenturyLink, Intel, Nokia, and SK Telecom. The consortium is working on projects in three strategic network areas: access, backhaul, and core and management.
The TIP Community Labs aim to allow at-scale real-world projects that lead to adoption. Facebook and SK Telecom also have similar labs at their offices.
The lab will provide “an open and collaborative working environment for members of TIP project groups to meet, test, and refine the solutions they’re developing,” Joey Padden, principal architect of wireless at CableLabs, says in a blog.
At the lab, engineers will have access to a variety of wired and wireless test equipment, including CableLabs’ channel emulators, traffic generators, LTE and DOCSIS sniffers, HFC networks used for lab work, various LTE UEs, and multiple EPCs (LTE core network).
According to Padden, the first project to be undertaken at the CableLabs TIP Community Lab will be the vRAN Fronthaul project, which focuses on virtualizing the radio access network (RAN) for non-ideal fronthaul links.
Densification and the proliferation of small cells is needed for 5G wireless networks, but it’s not economical to pull fiber links to every small cell, Padden says. Instead, fronthaul technology able to use “non-ideal” links to connect small cells (like DOCSIS, G.Fast, Ethernet, and Microwave) can “enable new deployment economics.”
CableLabs began participating in TIP last year and now holds a seat on the TIP Technical Committee.
“Everyone who has access to 4G LTE today loves how speedy their smartphone is and they want more. They want the speeds that 5G wireless networks promise,” Padden says. “But let’s be honest, we want it for equal to or less than what we pay for our service today. TIP is focused on building networks of the future through collaboration that will give operators the flexibility to grow their networks quickly, efficiently, and in a cost-effective manner while delivering the 5G speeds users will demand.”
