26 Aug 2021

Viavi teams with Picocom to validate O-RAN base stations

Viavi Solutions has teamed up with technology supplier Picocom to provide what it claims will be the sector’s first “complete test solutions to validate Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) base station components”.

The 5G TM500 network tester from Viavi will be combined with Picocom's small cell base station components including chips, physical layers and protocol stack software. The first component to be tested by the partnership will be Picocom’s PC802 baseband system on a chip (SoC), which will be the company’s first in a complete 5G O-RAN system.

Picocom founder Wu Jianwei said the partnership would help “usher in 5G industry applications” and advance O-RAN systems in stable small cell networks. Last month, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced the launch of a £30m Future RAN fund to remove barriers to entry for O-RAN technology.

Viavi vice president Jonus Chen said: “As vendors across the industry develop open, cloud-native and disaggregated architectures, testing against user expectations of service quality is critical in order to accelerate adoption at scale.

"Industry-leading 5G network testing solutions from Viavi, combined with Picocom's expertise, empowers the stringent end-to-end interoperability testing and performance validation that is necessary to advance O-RAN deployments."