SKT Develops Next-Generation Virtualized Base Station Technology... AI Reduces Power Consumption by 20%

SK Telecom announced on the 20th that it has successfully developed and tested a next-generation virtualized base station that improves power consumption and processing capacity of open RAN virtualized base stations.

A virtualized base station refers to a base station that can be implemented by installing only the necessary software on a general-purpose server, regardless of the manufacturer, unlike existing base stations where the hardware and software manufacturers had to be the same.

SKT employees testing next-generation virtualization base station technology.
[Photo by SKT]

Virtualized base stations are considered a key element of Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN), an important technology emerging for 5G advancement and 6G standardization. However, they have been pointed out to have higher power consumption and insufficient capacity compared to existing base stations, which are major areas for improvement.

SKT, together with Samsung Electronics, Ericsson, Nokia, and Intel, developed the ‘next-generation virtualized base station’ and ‘AI-based virtualized base station power consumption reduction technology,’ effectively improving the major technical challenges of power consumption and capacity in open RAN virtualized base stations.

SKT conducted interoperability tests on the next-generation virtualized base stations equipped with accelerator-embedded CPUs with Samsung Electronics and Ericsson, and inline accelerators (accelerators that handle all physical layer computations instead of the CPU) with Nokia. They confirmed improvements in processing capacity and power consumption compared to existing virtualized base stations. Additionally, SKT succeeded in testing AI-based virtualized base station power consumption reduction technology in collaboration with Intel.

The technology tested by SKT and Intel is AI-based and predicts traffic patterns to efficiently control the on/off operation of CPU cores in the virtualized base station server. Based on SKT’s commercial network data, the test results showed that CPU power consumption could be reduced by more than 20% compared to existing virtualized base stations.

Ryu Tak-gi, head of SKT’s infrastructure technology division, said, “This is a meaningful R&D achievement that improves both power consumption and processing capacity, which are important in open RAN virtualized base stations,” adding, “SKT views virtualized base stations as a technology that will form the foundation for 5G evolution and the new 6G network, and plans to continue research and development.”