Back in February, Ericsson advertised a massive MIMO RF module unit weighing around 20 kilograms, while Huawei promoted a 19 kilogram box a week later.

Nokia will launch with super-spec 5G radio frequency module

Nokia has seemed to be faltering in the 5G race since suffering from criticized problems under previous management. While China's Huawei and Sweden's Ericsson have been happy to show off their RF module specs, the Finnish company has long been in quiet catch-up mode. But its latest product updates could push it into a winning position and give it a shout, too.

Nokia looks to revive

Led by Tommi Uitto, Nokia's mobile experts appear to have sat down and laid out the most important metrics - the weight of the radio module unit, the bandwidth it can support, etc. - and made sure they have a 5G hit that, on paper at least, is either the best on the market, or at least as good as what Nokia's rivals have to offer. "We've been playing catch-up lately, but depending on the aspect or feature of connectivity, we're either tied for first or individually ranked first," Uitto said.

It starts with a high-performance "Massive MIMO" radio unit that weighs just 17 kilograms in a so-called 32TRX configuration (i.e. 32 transmitters and receivers). “The fantastic thing about the new product platform is that it will give us the lead in terms of weight for the highest capacity massive MIMO configurations in most markets in the world,” Uitto said.

Specs of Nokia's upcoming 5G radio unit

Back in February, Ericsson advertised a massive MIMO RF module unit weighing around 20kg, while Huawei promoted a 19kg box a week later. However, in both cases, these numbers are for the 64TRX configuration. Their 32TRX unit may be lighter.

But on a like-for-like basis, it seems reasonable to assume that Nokia is at least on par with its rivals, and that its 32TRX unit is well under the 25kg threshold. This is important because it relates to network construction costs. One person cannot easily carry heavier module equipment, and may even need to use a crane to lift it to the top of the transmission tower, thereby increasing telecom costs. Operators may also have to reinforce the mast to support any heavier equipment. Lightweight units are generally more energy efficient, in part because larger products require additional cooling equipment.

Nokia's five-year share price in Helsinki (€)

Not all chips are created equal

The 17kg achievement is partly the result of collaborations Nokia has been working with chip suppliers Broadcom, Intel and Marvell since last year. Its early mistake was relying on Intel as a single supplier. When Intel encountered manufacturing delays on its custom chips, Nokia had to rely on field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) from Xilinx. These bring flexibility, but they are also very "power hungry," Uitto said.

This has affected the profitability and competitiveness of Nokia's 5G products, partly because it seems that using FPGA is not conducive to making lightweight devices. “FPGAs are flexible, but they are harder to program and very power hungry, and when they use power that means they put out a lot of heat, so the whole radio product becomes bigger,” Uitto explained. "This is the challenge that new open RAN radio unit suppliers face in massive MIMO."

Strictly speaking, the challenge is not Open RAN, whose new interfaces are designed to let operators mix products from different vendors at the same site. In fact, Nokia insists that its new product portfolio is "open RAN ready" (it also supports open-RAN) and does not have to sacrifice performance when using the new interface.

Nokia looks to revive

Uitto's point is that smaller companies without Nokia's resources will struggle to develop the custom chips (ASICs) needed for lightweight, massive MIMO products. “Digital beamforming is computationally intensive, so the difficulty for new open RAN vendors is how they do beamforming,” he said."They have to use FPGAs because they can't develop custom ASIC like larger vendors."

An important aspect of Nokia's turnaround is a renewed commitment to research and development spending, which fell by nearly 450 million euros ($537 million) to about 4.1 billion euros ($4.9 billion) last year as rivals either held steady or increased their investments in R&D spending. Although Nokia claims to have increased R&D spending in 5G, new CEO Pekka Lundmark aims to cut annual costs by another 600 million euros ($717 million) by 2023 so that he can inject more money into R&D without hurting profitability.

Nokia's current budget is clearly beyond the reach of most organizations (although smaller open RAN players such as Irish radio equipment manufacturer Benetel aim to become more competitive through their own chip partnerships). But that money spent on 5G isn't just about weight reduction.

Nokia also said the new radio units can operate over a wider bandwidth (so-called instantaneous bandwidth, or IBW) and support more bandwidth (occupied bandwidth, or OBW). It boasts an IBW of 400MHz and an OBW of 200MHz, and says it has done so without changing the power output, meaning it is available in 240W and 320W configurations.

"The stats in terms of weight, power, IBW and OBW are as competitive as any other product I've seen," said lead technical analyst Gabriel Brown. "On paper, it's very competitive."

Operators that lack contiguous spectrum or share equipment with competitors seem bound to value the latest offering. They include UK-based service providers whose spectrum holdings are now in different parts of the mid-band range, even after some recent market activity.

improves baseband capabilities

Nokia now also claims to have market-leading capabilities in baseband hardware. A new unit can support up to 90,000 connected users and 288 units, delivering a total throughput of 84 Gbit/s. Uitto said the architecture's design means there are separate plug-in units for Layer 1 and Layer 2 processing, giving Nokia an important advantage over Ericsson.

Specs of Nokia's upcoming 5G baseband unit

"The computational requirements for Layer 1 and Layer 2 processing are growing faster than those for Layer 3 and transport," he explained. "It makes sense to separate these plug-in units rather than putting everything in the same pizza box like Ericsson did with its old Baseband 6630 or new Baseband 6648 products." According to Uitto, operators using these Ericsson systems are forced to spend money on Layer 3 and transmission capacity that is not really needed.

He said baseband units had been delivered to pilot customers who were "very satisfied" with the performance and the new radio platform would be available later this year. From now on, Nokia customers will be able to run all different generations of mobile technologies on a single radio access network platform, with common transport, network operations and software delivery. “They share the same hardware, which wasn’t the case in the past, so at that time we had to introduce 5G based on FPGA technology,” Uitto said.

The real proof of the newfound competitiveness will come when the commercial network is up and running, but chief technology analyst Brown sounded impressed and said the new product portfolio couldn't come at a better time. "It's already ready for U.S. C band deployments, and from that perspective it's perfectly timed."

In a market where the number of vendors is now so limited, operators may be breathing a sigh of relief at the slightest sign of Nokia's resurgence. "The industry needs Nokia to be truly competitive," Brown said. "This is not just about Nokia." For Huawei, Ericsson and Samsung , competition in the 5G field seems to have become more difficult.

(reference source: lightreading)