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Small cell virtualisation offers scalability and network slicing and so is likely to be used as a part of 5G networks, enterprise services and the internet of things (IoT).
Virtualisation allows network functions to be separated from the radio, and run on commodity hardware, including the Cloud. This allows resources to be scaled dynamically according to the number and type of mobile services in use.
Network slicing allows virtualised resources to be assigned on-demand, and as such will support multi-operator sharing.
However, virtualisation in the radio access network (RAN) tends to be vendor proprietary which results in fragmentation. The SCF aims to offer guidelines, interfaces and specifications which allow operators to approach virtualisation in an interoperable way.
David Orloff, chair of Small Cell Forum, writes:
“The benefits to the mobile industry of virtualisation are clear, with a range of major advantages including cost reduction, scalability and the ability to offer a broad range of new services. However, as with many new technologies the threat of fragmentation is very real.”
“We believe with Release 8 these guidelines will help accelerate virtualisation industry-wide.”
Central to Release 8 is an open interface specification which splits the small cell into physical and virtual components. Called nFAPI (network functional application platform interface), it defines a fronthaul link between physical and virtual, which can be transported over the packet ethernet connections widely available in enterprise, urban and campus deployments.
Release 8 documents will be available free from November 1st via the Small Cell Forum Release site.
