From February 28 to March 3, Analog Devices (ADI) will participate in Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona, Spain, with an exhibition stand (#2F25, Hall 2) that will showcase the company’s leading technologies and platforms for 5G Radio Units (RU). The series of demonstrations delve into advanced topics such as OpenRAN platforms and validation, massive MIMO, and software defined radio – reaffirming the company’s commitment to innovation, optimising performance and efficiency.
Anatomy of a 5G RU
One of the highlighted demonstrations on ADI’s stand will explore the building blocks that make up a state-of-the-art 5G RU, identifying the critical subsystems, together with the design choices and trade-offs to be made when developing an optimised RU. The demonstration will showcase not only ADI’s comprehensive product offering across a typical 5G RU, but also how close collaboration with ecosystem partners leads to versatile, high performance and low power outcomes.
Digital Pre-Distortion for Optimised Power Amplifier Performance
The key to maximising RU system efficiency is the optimisation of the digital pre-distortion (DPD) for each specific radio frequency (RF) power amplifier (PA). Collaboration between ADI and its partner PA suppliers achieves that optimisation and reduces engineering effort for customers. This has yielded an extensive library of solutions matching PA partners’ products with ADI’s latest DPD techniques, as will be shown in a demonstration that will explore critical attributes required of a DPD algorithm.
Enabling mmWave – 5G RUs with 7.2 Split
At the leading edge of 5G technologies, ADI offers the mmWave 5G portfolio. A demonstration will show a complete 28GHz 4-transmit/4-receive-antenna MIMO (4T4R) 5G RU that ADI designed inhouse, employing its own ICs and antenna IP from low PHY through the air interface. The display showcases ADI’s 7.2 split low PHY IP, with highly integrated sub-6GHz transceiver solutions followed by an Intermediate Frequency (IF) to mmWave antenna-in-board solution containing all necessary control and calibration, opening the way to mmWave 5G deployments across the entire 24 to 47GHz space.
Advanced OpenRAN RU Conformance Testing
ADI offers a complete radio platform for the 5G OpenRAN ecosystem, integrating its latest low power 8T8R RadioVerse® SoC and turnkey 7.2x split low PHY IP running on Intel’s Agilex™ FPGA. Front-haul conformance testing of the platform will be shown in one of the on-stand demonstrations; the design platform connects to Keysight’s OpenRAN Studio DU (Distributed Unit) emulator and PathWave Test Automation framework.
5G OpenRAN Phone Call, End-to-End
The ADI/Intel OpenRAN RU, together with Radisys’ 5G NR software stack is an end-to-end interoperability reference design for customisation and to accelerate time to market. The demonstration shows interoperability of a whitebox OpenRAN RU reference design that includes ADI’s versatile RadioVerse 4T4R Transceiver and turnkey 7.2x L1PHY IP running on Intel’s low power Arria® 10 FPGAs.
Massive MIMO for OpenRAN
ADI’s stand will also feature a demonstration of advanced 5G technologies in the form of a massive MIMO, 32T32R C-band, ASIC-based RU for an OpenRAN architecture. Presented as the result of collaboration between ADI, Marvell and Benetel, this whitebox massive MIMO RU employs ADI’s latest RadioVerse SoC with advanced digital front end (DFE), Marvell’s industry-leading baseband silicon with beamforming and Benetel’s low PHY software. The solution supports OpenRAN split 7.2x, delivering power, weight and performance improvements.
Software Defined Radio Developments
Focusing on the RadioVerse portfolio of software defined radios, an area on the exhibition stand will be devoted to showing how ADI designs next-generation technology to optimise the entire RU, rather than just an interface or component. The presentation will explore the impact of architecture decisions within the transceiver on system power, size, design complexity and cost. The latest 8T8R SoC series that provides an agile and cost-effective platform to create the most energy efficient RUs in the industry will be highlighted.
Showcase of Radio Units
ADI will display a wide range of wireless infrastructure radio units with its market leading transceivers along with RF, power and clock technologies. Example RUs from ADI’s OpenRAN customers will present leading-edge solutions in macrocell, massive MIMO, wireless back-haul, and small cell applications.
