As part of the first phase of the 5G C-RAN project, Spirent and the China Mobile 5G C-RAN Working Group successfully completed automated performance testing. During the second China Mobile 5G C-RAN Wireless Cloud Network Forum, Spirent presented the current outcomes and outlined the test practices used in refactoring for the China Mobile 5GC-RAN project.

In this project, the cloud architecture of the radio access network is viewed as the basis for carrying various future 5G applications. The cloud-enabled radio access network not only needs to ensure the coverage and capacity of basic voice communication services, but also the bandwidth demands of fast-growing extreme Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services, as well as the IoT and Cargo Network applications that offer large connectivity, low latency and high reliability with high network quality requirements.

Due to the technical characteristics of the 5G C-RAN, testing requirements for the underlying cloud architecture are different from those of other NFVs and public clouds. The test system can no longer use the traditional black box test method. It must adapt to work with multiple components such as VNFs, VIM, NFVi and SDN controllers and then must be able to validate various NFVi network acceleration and system real-time technologies, referred to as test refactoring.