New 5G FAPI updates include ASIC-friendly signalling, enhanced support for eMIMO precoders and more
SCF London, UK, 11 February 2025 – Small Cell Forum (SCF), the global trade organization committed to accelerating the sustainable digital transformation of industry, enterprises and communities, today announced the 9th update of its flagship 5G FAPI suite.
Originally a small-cell interface, SCF FAPI has evolved over the years into a full-blown 5G RAN MAC/PHY interface, which integrates 3GPP and O-RAN standards, and fosters a healthy, rich and heterogenous Open RAN ecosystem. This latest update underscores SCF’s commitment to updating the interface and advancing small cell and 5G technologies for an Open eco-system.
The 5G FAPI v9 updates include:
- Implementation-friendly precoders for enhanced MIMO
- Support for ASIC-assisted derivation of uplink precoders, under uplink constraints
- Support for pooling frequency allocations across carriers, in ASIC L1 implementations.
- Generalizes network monitoring functionality for acquiring 5G system information
SCF229 Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) Protocol For Inline High-PHY
- Updated to illustrate how an off-the-shelf YANG library can be used to implement FAPI OAM write transactions towards L1.
SCF’s FAPI work item lead, and Staff Engineer at Qualcomm, Andrei Radulescu, said: “Having fostered multi-vendor conversations and integration in the small cell and Open RAN ecosystems over the years, SCF has earned recognized expertise in the disaggregated RAN community. This lies at the foundation of SCF’s role in developing and promoting FAPI, the stage-3 interface between upper (L2/L3) and physical layers (L1).
“We are pleased to release this newest iteration of the FAPI suite, but we are already well underway working on version 10 which will include significant updates including further O-RAN alignment and 3GPP alignment and comprehensive support for integrated and disaggregated architectures such as Split 7.2 and Split 6.”
The FAPI specifications are written, edited and driven by SCF members, including Qualcomm, RANsemi, Mavenir, Airspan, Marvell and Reliance Jio.
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