Alcatel-Lucent has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China Mobile, for the development of a next-gen radio access network (RAN).
Under the agreement, both the companies will jointly launch technical and economic studies and investigate the technologies essential to build a centralised, collaborative, Cloud-based RAN (C-RAN) to set new standards for network intelligence and energy-efficiency.
The C-RAN will provide a common platform for multi-mode wireless standards including: GSM, 3G, and LTE, which improves network quality and coverage, reduce transmission resource consumption and lowers OPEX and CAPEX.
The C-RAN will leverage Alcatel-Lucent’s lightRadio, a mobile and broadband infrastructure to streamline and simplify mobile networks.
The new lightRadio system represents a new architecture where the base station, located at the base of each cell site tower, is broken into its components elements and distributed through the antenna or the network for cloud-like processing.
In addition, the various cell site tower antennas are combined and shrunk into a single small powerful, Bell Labs multi frequency, multi standard (2G, 3G, LTE) device that can be mounted on poles, sides of buildings or anywhere else there is power and a broadband connection.
Alcatel-Lucent Asia-Pacific president Rajeev Singh said the partnership with China Mobile is to them replace traditional network designs with flexible cloud-like architectures.
