Vision - Aira Technologies

AI for Wireless

The application of AI to wireless is going to have profound implications. AI improvements over the last decade resulted in breakthroughs in computer vision, natural language processing, and time series analyses. Microsoft demonstrated the power of applying AI in the domain of speech recognition. Their published research shows a very rapid and steep improvement curve in speech recognition with the application of deep learning networks.

Faster Development Time

We anticipate similarly dramatic improvements are possible in cellular with the application of AI. The cellular industry and 3GPP are broadly considering applying AI widely in the 6G timeframe. However, there is no need to wait until 6G.

Aira’s vision is to leapfrog to the expected capabilities with the existing wireless standards and network infrastructure. A rigorous application of AI to key aspects of wireless communications will radically improve network performance and enable a new range of revenue generating services while reducing operators’ TCO.

ORAN Movement

The O-RAN Alliance was established in 2018, and was created to facilitate the dis-aggregration of the radio access network infrastructure. The O-RAN Alliance is supporting the disaggregation of RAN software from hardware and defining new open interfaces that makes multi-vendor RAN implementations running on commercial, off-the-shelf hardware (COTS hardware) a real possibility. This work is supported by other industry groups such as the Telecommunications Infra Project (TIP) which ensures interoperability between vendors and lowers the barrier of entry for new entrants. In this way a thriving ecosystem has come together, driving down the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the network through competition and innovation.

ORAN has already enabled the following:

Standardized interfaces to allow for the disaggregation of the Radio Access Network (RAN) into 3 distinct components, namely the Radio Unit (RU), the Distributed Unit (DU) and the Centralized Unit (CU), with standardized interfaces allowing the integration of RAN elements from different vendors;
Virtualization of these components and the migration of network function to the cloud to benefit from the elastic nature of cloud resources; and,
The rise of a new ecosystem of multi-vendor RAN solutions that feature open and virtualized components. This is a shift from the days when the RAN market was split among just 3 or 4 vendors of proprietary and monolithic systems.

Cellular RAN disaggregating, like compute did in the past

Drives lower cost and more innovation

This sort of industry disruption happened in the computer industry with the advent of x86 computers and personal computing. The ORAN movement is very similar in its ambition and scope to what happened in the computing industry over twenty years ago - we believe that the ORAN movement will over time “horizontalize” cellular infrastructure and in the process dramatically accelerate innovation in RAN infrastructure.

Why Aira?

Aira is built on an absolute belief in AI and the ORAN movement. MNOs can no longer afford to operate in a slow innovation cycle. MNOs require new network architectures where cost can be contained and new services can be easily defined on an end-to-end basis. The disaggregation of the RAN and virtualization of its components makes it possible to integrate and insert innovation into the RAN from the best offerings across multiple vendors. Aira is one such vendor specializing in applying AI to RAN infrastructure. The AI-based performance improvements Aira gets result in higher throughput and wider cell coverage, allowing the MNO to deploy less sites, thereby utilizing less energy while maintaining superior QoS.