REDHAWK for VITA 49 Development in Open Radio Access Networks

This thesis establishes the need for a standardized, interoperable, front end interface to support the development of open RAN technologies, and establishes the viability and desirability of the VITA 49 interface standard as the alternative to other interface technologies. The purpose of this work is to propose a testbed platform for the further development for VITA 49 as a standard frontend interface as other current testbeds are not designed not as well suited to the VITA 49 standard or open RAN architecture. The VITA 49 interface standard provides a packetized interface between the front-end and the digital back-end of a split architecture system in a way that enables hardware interoperability between and within vendor supplies. The VITA 49 Radio Transport standard is ideally appropriate for integration into SDRs [12] due to its flexibility and metadata support. The REDHAWK platform is an integrated development environment which is used to develop a radio system that utilizes a remote radio unit to send and receive signals which transmits it using the VITA 49 protocol to the base band unit for processing. It was found that REDHAWK is better than GNURadio for this purpose, and that VRT technology is a much better than the current CPRI Standard as it provides an open standard, that enables a flexible, scalable interface that enables long-term growth.