Midsummer magic: a leap into the future of radio access networks
I hope you had a chance to join our Midsummer Launch on 21st June and learned about our latest innovations!
The new products and solutions we launched will enable CSPs and enterprises to better serve their customers with high-capacity, high-performance networks that leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence.
Let’s take a closer look at the new arrivals.
Delivering twice the performance with half the energy consumption
We’re really excited about the new additions to our AirScale baseband portfolio – ready for 5G-Advanced and future-proofed for exponential traffic growth, while helping our customers meet their ESG goals by keeping network and energy costs at a minimum.
These new products, which are powered by the latest generation of Nokia’s ReefShark System-on-Chip (SoC) technology, enable industry-leading baseband cell capacity, connectivity, and processing.
Our AirScale baseband portfolio is O-RAN compliant, ready to deploy both with Nokia radio products as well as with third party radios. They will also work perfectly in hybrid networks with our Cloud RAN solutions.
Levante and Lodos are our next generation baseband capacity cards. Levante is a 4G/5G capacity card that delivers ultra-performance. It doubles the number of supported Massive MIMO cells and yet reduces energy consumption by up to 60 percent. It also offers exponential scalability enabling up to three times larger site configurations. Lodos is a high-performance 4G/5G capacity card that offers enhanced scalability and reduces energy consumption by up to 30 percent These cards are ready for 5G-Advanced and future-proofed for exponential traffic growth.
Ponente is our new ultra-performance baseband control card. It supports increased traffic growth with up to 100 percent higher throughput capacity offering high-speed site connectivity. Ponente also reduces energy consumption by up to 80 percent and provides future-proof site evolution to 5G Standalone and 5G-Advanced, as well as efficiency in spectrum refarming. The cards integrate Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology, which uses hardware-processed security keys that are more secure than software-processed keys.
Check out our AirScale Baseband page for more details about the product capabilities. Levante, Lodos, and Ponente will be trialed later this year, with commercial shipments beginning in the first half of 2024.
With these new innovations, we are setting the competitive bar for baseband performance, scalability and efficiency higher than ever before.
Expansions to Nokia’s extensive radio portfolio
At Mobile World Congress 2023, we added new Habrok 64 and 32 TRX products to our existing Osprey Massive MIMO product family. Habrok is also powered by our latest ReefShark SoC technology to deliver outstanding radio performance with 30 percent better energy efficiency – leading to a 30 percent reduction in weight.
Habrok is O-RAN ready and will be deployed in both purpose-built RAN and Cloud RAN scenarios in the future.
We have Osprey Massive MIMO radios deployed in our customers’ networks all over the world, and the first wave of Habroks will be flying in later this year to join them, delivering even higher performance.
Now joining the flock, we have Pandion and Shikra. Pandion includes the next-generation FDD Remote Radio Heads, supporting up to three FDD bands in an optimized form factor. They are O-RAN compliant and suitable for both Cloud RAN and purpose-built deployments. Then we have Shikra, the leading-edge small cells for both outdoor and indoor scenarios, which complement our comprehensive portfolio.
Taking Artificial Intelligence driven automation and optimization to the next level
The journey from simple automation of radio networks to intelligent and AI-driven operations is a critical to enhance network efficiency, productivity and performance.
Manta rays are fish that are known for their capabilities for learning, problem solving and communication – a perfect match to the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) we are building into our Nokia MantaRay network management and optimization solutions portfolio.
We have the market-leading Self-Organizing Networks (SON) solution according to analysts, not only supporting our own RAN, but also in a multivendor environment. MantaRay SON has the industry’s widest range of SON modules – and it’s making more and more use of AI and Machine Learning (ML) for self-configuration, self-healing and self-optimization. See our MantaRay SON webpage for more details.
MantaRay Network Management (NM) is our future platform for Purpose-built RAN, Cloud RAN, and Core Network management, featuring built-in AI functionalities. It can scale from a single server for small enterprises to large-scale implementations in the biggest mobile networks. Read more on MantaRay NM webpage.
Complementing these key products, we have MantaRay RIC – our O-RAN compliant near real-time RAN Intelligent Controller. Many customers have already had the chance to trial our RIC and xApps developed for this platform. We will further evolve MantaRay RIC and its AI capabilities to fulfill its potential as a key enabler for RAN programmability. See this customer case study for an example of how we have leveraged RIC for cell load balancing.
I’m also very excited about our new MantaRay Energy, which combines Nokia’s capabilities to optimize the energy consumption of radio access networks with AI and ML. We are already leveraging ML and automation for configuring and optimizing the usage of RAN energy-saving features depending on network traffic conditions. As Artificial Intelligence continues to evolve, we will enter a world where the network learns and decides how to best reduce power consumption.
With MantaRay SON, MantaRay Network Management, MantaRay RIC and MantaRay Energy, we are putting investments where it matters most.
We are very proud to release our new 5G products and solutions. It was great to have three major customers joining our Midsummer Launch 2023 and we look forward to discussing further with all of you.
