SK Telecom (SKT) announced on Nov. 20 that it has successfully developed and tested a next-generation virtualized base station that improves the power consumption and processing capacity of Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) virtualized base stations.
A virtualized base station is a base station that can be implemented by installing only the necessary software on a general-purpose server, regardless of the manufacturer, unlike conventional base stations that require the same manufacturer of hardware and software.
Virtualized base stations are considered to be a key element of Open RAN, which is emerging as an important technology for 5G advancement and 6G standardization, but their high power consumption and lack of capacity compared to existing base stations have been pointed out as major improvements.
SKT said it has developed "next-generation virtualized base station" and "AI-based virtualized base station power consumption reduction technology" with Samsung Electronics, Ericsson, Nokia, and Intel, effectively improving power consumption and capacity, which are major technical challenges for Open RAN virtualized base stations.
SKT conducted interworking tests with Samsung Electronics and Ericsson on next-generation virtualized base stations with built-in accelerator CPUs and with Nokia on next-generation virtualized base stations with inline accelerators, respectively, and confirmed the effect of improving processing capacity and power consumption compared to existing virtualized base stations.
In addition, SKT successfully tested AI-based virtualized base station power reduction technology in collaboration with Intel.
The technology tested by SKT and Intel efficiently controls the on/off operation of each CPU core of the virtualized base station server by predicting traffic patterns based on AI, and was able to reduce CPU power consumption by more than 20% compared to existing virtualized base stations based on data from SKT's commercial network.
"This is a significant R&D achievement that improves both power consumption and processing capacity, which are critical for Open RAN virtualized base stations," said Yu Takki, Vice President and Head of Infra Tech Office of SKT. "SKT sees virtualized base stations as a technology that will be the foundation for 5G evolution and new 6G networks, and we plan to continue research and development."
