Synopsys: What’s Needed to Perform End-to-End Testing for 5G Open Radio Access Network SoCs

Testing an O-RAN Radio Unit (O-RU) SoC at full scale implies sending realistic traffic, in conformance with current specifications and at the right time on the right interfaces to simulate complex scenarios and cover as many corner cases as possible. It requires a robust debug methodology which can provide quick turn around and appropriate window for the fix at minimum cost.

Since the O-RU SoC design spans both the time and frequency domains, it is vital to send traffic from both sides to test how the design reacts to uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) scenarios and check decompression, precoding, beamforming, and other functions as well as DL / UL buffers. Building calibrated signals that conform to the 5G standard, simulating traffic on a multitude of carriers and antennas at different frequencies and sample rates and ensuring parameters comply with the latest 5G specifications are challenging tasks. Most methodologies and tools used by testing teams today at pre-silicon do not span the entire 5G protocol stack but only inject isolated signals.

This Synopsys webinar with Keysight, presents the industry’s first and only end-to-end 5G O-RU (O-RAN Radio Unit) testing solution using specialized tools like PathWave Signal Generation software, Signal Studio Pro for 5G NR, Open RAN Studio software, IxRAN –5G pre-silicon testing solution, PathWave Vector Signal Analysis (VSA) software and 89600 VSA from Keysight, interfacing through the Synopsys Virtual 5G-ORAN Tester Interface and Synopsys ZeBu® transactors to run at multi-MHz speed on ZeBu emulation systems.