VIAVI Solutions has partnered with Calnex Solutions, a specialist in network synchronization and emulation, to deliver a suite of testing solutions for Open RAN products. The joint testbeds encompass protocol, signal, and timing validation, enabling organizations to conduct in-house pre-certification testing more efficiently and cost-effectively. These ready-to-use setups eliminate the need for extensive debugging, allowing teams to begin testing immediately.
As 5G and 6G networks evolve toward Open RAN and AI-RAN architectures, the telecom infrastructure market is opening up to a broader ecosystem of players, including startups and university spin-offs. While this expansion fosters innovation, it also introduces challenges particularly around maintaining performance, security, interoperability, and reliability in multivendor environments.
Although official certification through O-RAN ALLIANCE and 3GPP laboratories remains mandatory, pre-testing plays a critical role in ensuring smoother certification processes and avoiding the high costs of test failures.
Three Ready-to-Use Open RAN Testbeds Available
Through the VIAVI–Calnex partnership, manufacturers of O-RU, O-DU, and O-CU equipment can now access three comprehensive testbeds designed to accelerate validation and deployment:
- End-to-End and Cybersecurity Test Solution – Covers fronthaul and midhaul testing to ensure secure, reliable connectivity.
- O-RU and O-DU Test Solution with S-Plane Testing – Enables detailed synchronization and control plane validation.
- Core Network Emulation Test Bundle – Focused on backhaul testing to replicate real-world network performance.
Additional testbeds are in development.
The joint solutions leverage VIAVI’s TM500 and XEdge test platforms for emulated and real user equipment scenarios, as well as its TeraVM network traffic generator.
The comprehensive testing capabilities are then completed via specialist hardware from Calnex, notably its Paragon-neo for O-RU and O-DU synchronization, SNE-Ignite for fronthaul and midhaul impairment emulation, and SNE-X for core network emulation.
“During the development phase, many O-RUs are only tested with a single O-DU/O-CU vendor, which results in failure under real-world network conditions. This issue is compounded as the industry lacks tools to emulate realistic fronthaul conditions,” said Ian Langley, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Wireless Business Unit, VIAVI.
“Our partnership with Calnex puts these tools directly into the developers’ hands to vastly speed and simplify Open RAN test lab setup.
“Companies urgently need in-house labs to validate their Open RAN systems, but establishing them has traditionally required equipment from multiple vendors and can take several months of debugging to ensure interoperability,” said Tommy Cook, CEO, Calnex.
“VIAVI and Calnex’s offerings are highly complementary, and we’ve undertaken the complex integration work to create these first-of-their-kind comprehensive testing systems and eliminate the issues that have plagued many developers.”
The integrated systems from VIAVI and Calnex allow for full O-RAN and 3GPP conformance testing, including key WG4, WG5, and TIFG specifications, while also emulating realistic network impairments like jitter and delay.
This enables the rigorous testing of key functions like S-plane resilience and advanced scenarios such as multi-cell handovers, supported by powerful root-cause debugging and cybersecurity vulnerability testing across all O-RAN components.
