5G and the transformation of RAN planning

Core and RAN network engineers will work together to plan and optimize what were once separate and soloed parts of a network

India is on the cusp of a telecom revolution. 4G is well entrenched in the country and the process of establishing 5G networks has begun. Telcos are preparing for the much anticipated 5G spectrum auction. Simultaneously, they are laying down the infrastructure to roll out 5G services either later in the year or early next year.

When it comes to 5G, network engineers around the world can agree on one thing. Designing, planning, and optimizing 5G networks is highly complex, but that’s not all.

Prior to 5G, the focus for RAN was placed on coverage, capacity, and minimizing interference. No one thought about designing the RAN to reduce latency. But in a 5G world where ultra-low latency applications and services are a driving USP, maximizing network speeds and throughput becomes inherent to the way network engineers design and plan 5G RAN.

In addition to the above, the old issue of meeting growing customer demand for existing and new applications will remain. India is seeing an exponential increase in its traffic density, which will grow even more once 5G becomes operational. According to India’s Economic Survey 2021-2022, there was a significant increase in per user per month wireless data usage from 1.24 GB in the first quarter of 2018, to 14.1 GB in the same quarter of 2022. With this type of traffic requirement, how long will it be before the operators run out of capacity?

5G’s success will call for a higher QoS

Globally in countries that have functional 5G networks, the architectural design of the RAN is changing and it will be critical to 5G’s success. According to The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in March 2022 India had 1,142 million wireless subscribers. As the country sees an increase in the number of connected devices and an upsurge in data traffic across mobile networks, 5G will evolve to support an increased variety of data, devices, mission-critical applications and processes. In addition to an increased data throughput, 5G will also provide increased capacity and ultra-low latency channels to support complex next-generation applications.

With 5G, telcos will face significant challenges that legacy architectures are not designed to address.Network planning so far has typically meant dealing with issues such as signal strength, coverage and mobility support for voice channels, video channels and generic data channels. A dropped call resulting from a weak signal represents nothing more than inconvenience for the caller. In the 5G era of mission critical applications, this will change. Take the examples of autonomous driving or remote surgery. In these mission-critical applications, the wider consequences of system failures could be severe.

5G will bring a dramatic increase in the value of services. This will imply service interruptions will have to be avoided at all costs. Planning, testing, and validation will need to become more accurate and standardized. Engineers will need to plan for effective service delivery and continuity, and actively guarantee optimal QoS.

Collaboration will be key

The RAN forms the entry point in a mobile network. But for end-to-end service delivery, the access domain needs to connect to other domains and applications such as transport, core, IMS,and so on. 5G is set to change this. In a 5G architecture, some of these domain edges are blurred because RAN resources can co-habit with core functions distributed across edge data centers.

Planning for this shared data center usage will require collaboration between engineering teams that traditionally have worked independently or in silos. What’s more, RAN planning engineers will face the added challenge of having to rely on tools and applications that have been traditionally operated and owned by network core engineers.

This will bring in quite a few changes. For instance, planning processes and tools will need to enable and support collaboration between core and RAN network engineers, providing visibility of edge infrastructure resources. They will work together to plan and optimize what were once separate and siloed parts of the network.

The planning process will also need to consider the fronthaul transmission requirements to reach the edge infrastructure. This is because RAN processing resources will be located in the edge data centers.The edge will therefore have the RAN resourcescompeting for space with other core network functions and applications.Striking the perfect balance between the merging of core, RAN and edge environments will significantly change the role of RAN planning.

Operators should not underestimate the task of network planning in 5G. The planning and optimization of future 5G networks will be key to ensuring the infrastructure meets 5G demands. 5G will bring in different standards for coverage, capacity and QoS. Multiple parameters and wider competencies will overlap across operational groups, from RAN engineers to core engineers.

If telcos are unable to see the finer nuances of 5G network planning, they won’t be able to deliver on the promise of many 5G services and crucially, they will miss out on significant revenue opportunities. With so much investment placed on 5G, it’s not a risk they can afford to take.

Written by: Jugad Bawa is Director, Sales, South Asia and Middle East, TEOCO, India