Summary

Part of "The Mother of all Network Benchmark Tests" Series of Reports

SRG just completed its 43rd 5G benchmark study. For this endeavor we collaborated with Spirent Communications to conduct what we believe is the first independent study of Open RAN RU and DU/CU performance (not conformance). We did these tests at the Spirent facilities in NJ (RU) and TX (DU/CU), using the Spirent ORAN test platform.

Highlights of the Report include the following:

Our Thanks: We did this study with the support of Spirent Communications, who provided their test platform and engineering support. SRG is responsible for all analysis and commentary provided in this report.

The Scope:  We tested 3 Open RAN RU reference platforms and 2 Open RAN commercially available DU/CU platforms using a “wraparound” approach that allowed us to simulate multiple UEs (phones) and their individual / total performance in a Band n78 100 MHz radio channel with varying radio conditions. We included static conditions and multiple TDLA/TDLB fading channels. We looked at receive sensitivity, DL/UL throughput, and BER, generally using fixed MCS values with both 64 QAM and 256 QAM MCS tables. For the DU/CU tests, we varied the pathloss to emulate near-cell to far-cell conditions while measuring the DU performance in increments of 0.5 dB.

The RU Results: There were dramatic differences between the top performing and the worst performing RU with the best performing RU being a different reference platform between the downlink and uplink tests. Receive sensitivity differences approached the high single digits to the low double digits (dB), while the differences in the throughput were up to the high double digits and even triple digits on a percentage basis.

The DU Results:  With optimal radio conditions, the results were comparable. However, with more challenging radio conditions one platform achieved close to 30% higher throughput throughout much of the cell. The other DU eventually caught up with higher pathloss where this solution slightly outperformed the other DU.