When you possibly can constantly take a look at community software program, how does RF testing additionally want to alter?
CI/CD is a instrument of the IT world, of hyperscalers. Cellular community operators have labored for years to remake themselves in that picture, to turn into software-centric with a view to obtain the identical scale and agility. However MNOs are MNOs exactly as a result of they’ve one thing that nobody else does: A Radio Entry Community. And for all that it’s invisible to the attention, RF is in the end a bodily interface.
“The cloud-scale corporations like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, they stay this world,” says David Woodcock, who handles product technique for take a look at orchestration firm ACentury. “They’re used to frequent, small adjustments, a number of occasions a day. And the cellular community operators are going to wish to have the ability to get to that as effectively, to benefit from the agility and the potential of cloud-native networking. However they’re handcuffed to the truth that they’ve received this large bodily asset of a wi-fi community that’s going to wish to have the ability to be examined on the identical form of pace.
“CI/CD is all about automating all of the take a look at suites – which is very easy when what you’re testing is digital,” he continues. “However the radio layer could be very a lot bodily.” That always means guide take a look at set-up in a lab that mirrors, as a lot as potential, the manufacturing community. “You may’t actually do steady integration and steady deployment, with steady testing within the center, if it’s a must to cease doing what you’re doing and re-align your lab to do the subsequent take a look at,” Woodcock says. “RF is totally different. I’ve seen it many occasions in my profession the place individuals from the wired IT business assume that the radio hyperlink a part of any community is rather like an Ethernet cable, and it’s not. So it is advisable incorporate that layer into your end-to-end take a look at – and proper now, it’s the limiting issue for how briskly you possibly can take a look at.”
He explains: “When [carriers are] doing new function testing or regression testing, when Apple releases a brand new iOS replace, or there’s new Android firmware, or Community Vendor A releases a quarterly patch to their infrastructure, they’ve tons of or 1000’s of take a look at instances they should run of their labs to verify all that stuff works, nonetheless. And that entails doing 100s of cellular originated cellphone calls and file downloads and video calls all whereas simulating roaming between all their totally different web site designs and vendor combos and to do a kind of checks it generally takes them hours or days to arrange the RF surroundings of their lab to do a take a look at that takes 20 minutes.”
As a result of there may be a lot to check, he continues, he has seen firsthand that there might be time-to-market delays in, say, having the ability to promote a flagship gadget as a result of the lab isn’t obtainable. “It’s an ongoing problem. It’s going to worsen, too,” Woodcock says. Not solely does each “G” add new spectrum bands and enhance the complexity of the RF surroundings (and add to check time), the emergence of Open RAN and the pushing of disaggregation into the RAN provides yet one more layer that must be built-in. “The variety of distributors concerned is an order of magnitude greater, and who is aware of what their cadence goes to be for once they launch their driver updates?” He foresees that operators will handle that complexity by limiting the variety of vendor combos they permit of their networks and demanding that these distributors work collectively forward of time on integration. However, he says, “They’re going to wish to construct a testing infrastructure that permits them to play with these combos and attempt to discover ways in which they break, and stop that. And [do it] quick.” As a result of in any other case they lose the very pace and agility that they’ve been working to realize by implementing software program so deeply and broadly throughout the community.
Carriers, Woodcock says, “truthfully have had their fingers full with the transition to cloud-native and virtualized networks. … They had been pretty snug with how they dealt with the RF a part of their worlds. However … increasingly more now, they’re beginning to assume, that is now the limiting case in how we speed up. So they should rethink about how you can pace up the RF portion of the end-to-end take a look at.”
For extra insights on CI/CD and steady testing in telecom networks, try this on-demand webinar and obtain the RCR Wi-fi Information function report The continual problem: Software program, CI/CD and testing within the new community.
