OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA): New Strategic Members for 2016

EURECOM is proud to announce that three major industrial groups have joined the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA) in 2016 – Orange, TCT Communication Technology, and Ercom – and will make up the current strategic board of the OSA. Along with the associate partners, EURECOM and the new strategic board will lay down the path for making the OSA a driving force for innovation in 5G systems focusing on the following strategic areas:

Software-defined Networks
5G Air-interface
Internet of Things
5G Prototyping and Testing Methodologies
Heterogeneous Networking

Some words from the new members:

Orange

“Orange has been embedding Open Source software within its products and services for many years, including in its traditional Voice and Communication services business. We are now reinforcing our plans around Open Source as our governance has defined a new Open Source policy aiming at driving more innovation, developing a deeper understanding of open source systems, optimizing costs and increasing agility. Today, mobile operators’ networks are deployed based on dedicated hardware equipment. The trend is moving towards software network functions running on generic hardware. For research activities, the OAI platform already allows a full software implementation of an LTE base station, core network and device. As a strategic member of OSA, one of the Orange objectives is to accelerate our research and innovation towards 5G, by leveraging a mutualized software platform allowing us to implement, test and demonstrate 5G technologies in real time. A longer-term objective is to assess the added value of introducing open source software in our networks, particularly with 5G in mind,” said Nicolas Demassieux, Senior Vice President, Orange Labs Research

TCT

“We are very enthusiastic to join and contribute to the OSA initiative. We firmly believe that a new collaborative approach to the technology and standard development can be built on the foundation of an Open Source project as OSA. As a leading wireless devices manufacturer, TCT will bring its’ expertize and unique position in the Alliance to contribute to the User Equipment development and to ensure that end-users expectations and terminals constraints are taken into account in the new technology design.This is another milestone in TCT’s commitment to support the development of the 5G technology and to develop the company leading position in the industry.” said Pierre Bonnard, Director 5G Program TCT Mobile Europe.

Ercom

“Ercom is proud to join the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance as a strategic member. As a recognized expert of mobile network testing solutions, we will contribute to accelerate the maturation of the 5G standard thanks to our world first cloud-based mobile network emulation solution. This collaboration will enable us to keep developing state-of-the-art tools to support the developments and deployments of 5G networks,” said Yannick Dupuch, CEO of Ercom.

About the OSA

The complexity of wireless networks is in constant evolution with the arrival of new standards and in particular the onset of 5G. The main players in this ecosystem – vendors, operators and service providers – will benefit from the 5G reference implementation federated by the OSA in order to better assess the performance and limits of the technology. Established in 2014, the OSA is a French non-profit organization (“Fonds De Dotation”), funded by corporate sponsors. Our board comprises of the representatives from strategic members of the alliance. The OSA provides a framework for intellectual property and financial contributions to stimulate community-based software development of 3GPP systems while at the same time limiting potential legal exposure for our project committers. The Alliance also promotes meritocratic process in which individual members can contribute to the OSA software development of the core software or the projects run by various member corporations/non-profit organizations. The Alliance is also responsible for organizing events/trainings and conferences around OpenAirInterface (OAI) software. The OSA aims to work closely with 3GPP, ETSI and NGMN to better understand the role of open-source in the cellular industry and to continue providing a common framework for research. In Europe, the OSA is playing a significant role in providing open-source software for prototyping 5G innovations in the context of the first phase of the 5GPPP framework. This activity will increase in 5GPPP phase 2 (2016-2017) dealing with experimentation and proof-of-concept demonstrators.

OSA currently provides a standard-compliant implementation of a subset of Release 10 LTE for UE, eNB, MME, HSS, SGw and PGw on standard Linux-based computing equipment (Intel x86 PC/ARM architectures). The software is freely distributed by the Alliance under the terms stipulated by the OSA license model. It can be used in conjunction with standard RF laboratory equipment available in many labs (i.e. National Instruments/Ettus USRP and PXIe platforms) in addition to custom RF hardware provided by EURECOM to implement these functions to a sufficient degree to allow for real-time interoperation with commercial devices. The primary future objective is to provide an open-source reference implementation which follows the 3GPP standardization process starting from Rel-13 and the evolutionary path towards 5G and that is freely-available for experimentation on commodity laboratory equipment.

About EURECOM

EURECOM is a Graduate school and Research Centre in Communication Systems located in the Sophia Antipolis technology park (French Riviera), a major European place for telecommunications activities.

It was founded in 1991 in a consortium form [GIE][1] that allowed EURECOM to build a large network of renowned academic and industrial partners. The “Institut Mines Telecom” is a founding member of EURECOM consortium. EURECOM research teams are made up of international experts, recruited at the highest level, whose work is regularly honored and has earned international recognition.

EURECOM is particularly active in research in its areas of excellence while also training a large number of doctoral candidates. Its contractual research is recognized across Europe and contributes largely to its budget.

Based on the close ties it has developed with industry, EURECOM can direct an essential part of its research activities towards areas of interest for its industrial partners. One of our challenges is to fill the gap between fundamental research and the more business oriented one in our partner companies. From the beginning, the main objective set by our members was excellence on an international level. In research this excellence results in a high number of publications and patents, in the active participation to international scientific events and organizations and of course in getting many important European contracts in the European framework. Given its size, EURECOM chose to focus its research activities on three main areas: networking and security, multimedia communications and mobile communications.

The largest department, Mobile Communications, focuses on digital signal processing for mobile communications applications that include current generation 4G and next generation 5G cellular radio systems, wireless protocols, information theory, and networking. Funding for research activities comes from private industry, European and national level sources in field of wireless communications.

Contact :

Laurence Grammare, communication manager
EURECOM – CS 50193
F-06904 Sophia Antipolis cedex
Phone: +33 (0)4 93 00 81 21
Laurence.Grammare@eurecom.fr
http://www.eurecom.fr

OpenAirInterface.org
Contact Point
http://www.openairinterface.org
contact@openairinterface.org

[1]Current members of EURECOM consortium :

Orange, ST Microelectronics, BMW Group Research & Technology, Symantec, Monaco Telecom, SAP, IABG.

Telecom ParisTech, Aalto University (Helsinki), Politecnico di Torino, Technische Universität München (TUM), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Czech Technical University Prague (CTU), Chalmers University

Principality of Monaco. Institut Mines Telecom is a founding member.