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radisys.com 22 Radisys Series — Who Disaggregated My RAN? eBook Here are some of the key areas in which a system integrator must have significant capabilities in order to successfully deploy a multi-vendor RAN solution. Integration: RAN component integration is very different from system integration. It requires deep knowledge of standards (3GPP, O-RAN, Small Cell Forum and others) as well as system architectures viewpoint, a good understanding of the hardware processors, SoC platforms, and how to integrate the underlying hardware and software environments. Finally, Open RAN integration requires knowledge of specialized processors like FPGAs and ASICs and application acceleration techniques to integrate them with general purpose hardware. Integration of all of these aspects requires a very niche experience to bring in any mix of hardware and software and make it all work together. Testing: Knowledge of industry standard tools, the ability to automate and analyze test results, and characterizing the quality of integration are all key to successful testing of RAN solutions. This level of testing is not simple functional testing to make sure all of the network functions are talking together. It takes multiple levels of testing in multi-vendor RAN solutions, starting from the basic functional tests and call flows in an end-to-end fashion, to the various conformance, interoperability and other types of system testing. Benchmarking: Just having a functional integration of RAN components is not enough. Operators want to know that a solution is performing on par with traditional solutions. RAN solutions, especially for 5G, should live up to the promise of high data rates, low latency and other performance aspects like being CPU efficient, catering to more users with less hardware resources, and network resiliency in case of failures. It takes an innate knowledge from

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