Viavi Solutions has found something to celebrate in the electronics testing realm.
The opening of the Viavi Automated Lab-as-a-Service (VALOR) Open RAN testing facility in Chandler, Arizona, got a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month, and with good reason. VALOR’s mission is to provide democratized, vendor-neutral access to Open RAN test capabilities that typically have been out of reach to all but large, established players in the field.
This allows the development and deployment of Open RAN technologies to be simplified, encouraging competition and giving new entrants and startups a pathway to U.S. certification without the need for significant investment in hardware and software.
The opening of the VALOR Open RAN testing facility in Chandler, Arizona, was attended by senior Viavi management, customers, partners, government officials and dignitaries. Source: Viavi Solutions Inc.Viavi took an automated, on-demand “pay-as-you-go” approach to its VALOR service, with a dedicated online portal that allows customers to sign up for the service, set up and schedule tests, and generate reports optimized for technology development, system verification and precertification performance, security and predeployment simulation.
The service brings together Viavi’s NITRO Wireless Open RAN Test Suite, the unified framework of the Viavi Automation Management and Orchestration System (VAMOS) for hybrid physical and cloud lab testing, and technologies from industry-leading partners. These include a joint O-RU testbed with Rohde & Schwarz for O-RU conformance and network energy saving tests, an ETS-Lindgren RF anechoic chamber for Massive MIMO and beamforming over-the-air (OTA) performance testing, and “golden” Open RAN-compliant O-CU, O-DU and O-RU reference technologies from Fujitsu, SOLiD and Capgemini.
"The grand opening of the VALOR lab is an important step in democratizing Open RAN testing for technology vendors by providing them with rapid access to comprehensive end-to-end solutions for everything from product development to performance stress tests,” said Oleg Khaykin, Viavi president and chief executive officer. “Supporting the services of existing industry test labs, VALOR closes existing test gaps and is set to play a key role in accelerating Open RAN adoption and encouraging new entrants to the Open RAN ecosystem.”
The project is funded by a grant from the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund and is the first test service to be authorized by the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) for their system performance certification program.
The service will ultimately offer over 500 test cases compliant with O-RAN WG4, WG5, WG11, TIFG and 3GPP specifications.
