Keysight’s Participation in O-RAN Global PlugFest Spring 2022 Enables Ecosystem to Speed Open RAN Technology Development and Specifications Maturity

Keysight Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: KEYS), a leading technology company that delivers advanced design and validation solutions to help accelerate innovation to connect and secure the world, participated in the fourth global PlugFest event organized by the O-RAN ALLIANCE, accelerating development of Open RAN (O-RAN) technologies with open standard interfaces, intelligence and security.

Keysight Open RAN Architect (KORA) solution portfolio enabled 15 vendors, 4 mobile operators and 2 Open Testing and Integration Centers (OTIC) at 3 PlugFest venues and 5 labs across Asia, Europe and North America to verify integration of multi-vendor network functions and compliance to O-RAN specifications.

Keysight collaborated with leading vendors and mobile operators on industry first demonstrations in key areas of innovation including:

• Evaluation and assessment of energy savings features using live networks traffic profiles which have shown significant reduction in energy consumption for a multi-vendors cloud-native O-RAN system.
• Enablement of RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) assisted artificial intelligence / machine learning (AI/ML) optimization for energy savings and admission control use cases, as well as an orchestration framework that supports rapid deployment of test and validation for near-real time RICs and xApps.
• Pre-certification testing of the O-RAN Radio Unit (O-RU), automated security testing for DevSecOps with 3GPP Security Assurance Specification (SCAS) test cases, Denial of Service (DoS) and fuzzing attacks simulations and performance testing of O-RAN Xhaul transport network elements’ fronthaul implementation under real-world conditions.

“Keysight is pleased to collaborate with partners in the fourth O-RAN Global PlugFest during which we have successfully completed several industry-first demonstrations in key areas including energy savings, RIC-enabled AI/ML based optimization, test automation framework for RICs and applications, pre-certification testing, DevSecOps security with attacks simulation and transport network elements performance testing,” said Giampaolo Tardioli, vice president and general manager of Keysight’s Network and Operators group.