SKT and Japan's NTT Docomo Publish AI-RAN White Paper, Aiming to Advance 6G Expansion

SK Telecom announced on March 31 that it has published a white paper jointly with NTT Docomo, Japan's largest mobile carrier, outlining the requirements for implementing virtualized base stations and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered radio access networks (AI-RAN).

The white paper jointly published by SK Telecom and NTT Docomo. SK Telecom.

In the white paper, the two companies analyzed the potential for developing virtualized base stations and AI-RAN based on their experience in building and operating mobile networks. They also examined the technological requirements, key implementation technologies, and the anticipated benefits of adopting these solutions.

The white paper also sets out three core technological requirements necessary to maximize the effectiveness of virtualized base stations and AI-RAN. It emphasizes the need to clearly separate hardware and software in order to quickly introduce new features. By functionally decoupling base station control software from specific hardware or virtualization platforms, software can be deployed independently of the underlying infrastructure.

The paper also highlights the importance of 'resource pooling' to enable flexible infrastructure deployment and improve resource utilization. Resource pooling is a technology that consolidates distributed computing resources into a single pool to enhance efficiency. This technology makes it possible to maintain service quality while expanding base station capacity and increasing power efficiency.

Implementing AI computing capabilities using virtualized base station systems is also cited as a key challenge. In a virtualized base station architecture based on general-purpose and accelerated processors (xPU), orchestration technology can be used to manage both AI and communication resources in an integrated way. This enables the operation of AI-RAN, an integrated AI platform that delivers both virtualized base station communications and AI services simultaneously.

The two companies plan to continue their technical cooperation in areas such as strengthening 5G competitiveness and efficiency, standardization and technology verification for 6G, and more.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.