Corning opens wireless development center in India to develop core skillsets, and people

Corning Technologies Pvt Ltd India has announced the opening of its Wireless Software Development Center of Excellence in Gurugram, India. The Center will help advance the adoption of 5G wireless networks across India by making it easier for service providers, system integrators, academic institutions, and enterprises to test their services and solutions, acquire new capabilities, and achieve operational efficiencies.

“Corning India’s Wireless Software Development Center of Excellence will enable Corning India’s wireless teams to develop innovative software solutions for public and private 5G-enterprise networks, work on wireless product concepts, and focus on system engineering,” said Dr. Shirish Nagaraj, Chief Technologist, Wireless, and Director, Wireless R&D, Corning Optical Communications.

Elaborating on the Wireless Software Center of Excellence, Dr. Shirish Nagaraj said that Corning has been in wireless for about 10-odd years developing small cells and distributed antenna systems. Software has become a core competency for us. We are based in California, USA. We recognize the need for growing the capacity and the capability. We understand that India is now the main hub for this kind of talent. That has been the driver for us to develop systems and software capability here in India.

The Center will be a mirror of most of the work that we do in California. We will focus on systems engineering, the front-end work of designing the systems. We are also doing software development focusing on cloud, virtualization, etc., and wireless software or the protocol stacks. We are investing in a new capability, especially, for system performance characterization. We are building 5G wireless inbuilding systems. We are building a team here that will work closely with the research team in Pune. We will develop capabilities for characterizing the system. It can be where the throughput is, thermal performance, modelling, etc. The work is already ongoing here, in Gurgaon.

Foray into wireless

Corning covers the entire range of radio access capability, but they are tailored to inbuilding systems. Dr. Nagaraj said that we cover the whole range of RAN. For O-RAN, we will see how the things evolve. The fact that a majority of interfaces are going to open up allows you to have vendor diversity. The operators are interested in that to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO). Even as a RAN vendor, we are seeing the potential to work with other ecosystem players, to put submissions together, and integrate the system.

We have had a tradition to be fairly open in our working even before O-RAN came in. For example, on the X2 interface, working with another eNodeB partner or supplier, our system 5G system can work with any other 4G vendor system. We are being very open in that matter. X2 interface is a point-to-point logical interface between two eNodeBs with the E-UTRAN.

The foray into wireless has been quite organic for Corning. For wireless, we need to have the entire ecosystem participate to build a new solution, such as access points, small cells, etc., and especially to drive fiber in the horizontal. We have also done a series of strategic acquisitions.

For an enterprise and inbuilding solution, we have all the components and the entire range of fiber and radio. We have the remote powering solutions, as well as the composite cable that delivers both fiber and power. We have access points, switches, radios, and controllers. We are now virtualizing. We are running it as a software that can be cloud managed.

All of the software actually runs the RAN. It is right from the protocol stack to the platform layer, to virtualizing the RAN. There are different aspects of software, real-time embedded software, and our virtualization work. The core skill is really the wireless protocol stack, such as 5G NR, etc. We are developing the whole protocol stack and making the end-to-end solution work. There is also the management system that controls them all. Our systems are commercially deployed. We already have our mmWave systems seeing many deployments, especially, in the USA.

Looking at talent

In India, first and foremost, we are looking to contribute by developing the talent, he added. We are now hiring people for the India Wireless Center. This is another Center, along with our California, US, and Israel Centers. We develop core skillsets, and people. We are going to get the top talent from the leading universities.

Another aspect is that, we are now developing 5G testbeds, etc., and lab infrastructure, including here in India. We are developing the cloud RAN infrastructure. Now, we can have a full, end-to-end 5G call capability. You can now do throughput test, coverage, etc. Infrastructure development is also happening here.

All of our baseband software is running here over COTS servers. We are having switches, routers, powering solutions, etc. We are making this as a mini data center. A developer sitting remotely can actually rent a setup to test a network. It is like a shared resource. Think of the whole wireless infrastructure as a shared resource.

We already have an optical fiber plant in India. In wireless, we are just foraying into India. We are starting the development center first. Then, we have to look at the opportunities that unfold in India with 5G. To expand our outreach for acquiring talent, we are also looking to engage with universities in India. It is going to be mix of talent from tier 1, and tier 2 and 3 cities.

Innovative solutions

How would Corning India teams develop innovative software solutions for public and private 5G enterprise networks? Dr. Nagaraj said that Corning has been inbuilding specialists. We think about inbuilding wireless and networks. There is also the public network piece. There are also private networks that are coming up. Lot of the use case definitions are happening right now. We are ideally suited for engaging with enterprise networks. Our solutions are clearly working for public networks also. With private core, we can also enable private networks. The architectures that we define are very much tailored with that.

And, what about 5G use cases? He said that if you look at the enterprises, being able to get an operator signal inside a building is very critical. That can be the simplest use case. On top of that, if the enterprises run their apps, that's a different scenario. There are lots of airports, ports, mining, manufacturing, etc., where the use cases are still being developed. It will take some time. Enterprises should have the architecture that is ready. Then comes the speed and ease of use. At the end of the day, an IT person deployment can be different from the CSP deployment. Also, the network management should be really very simple to manage. For the enterprises, managing this will be critical. You have to make your solution as simple to deploy. We are making our solutions very simple. Speed and ease of deployment is critical.

What is the work going on regarding wireless product concepts and focus on system engineering? Dr. Nagaraj added that we are focusing on wireless software development and front-end systems engineering. They come up with the architecture. It is done by the systems engineering team that requires a different skillset. We see a lot of talent here in India. We are augmenting our teams in California and Israel. We are also having systems engineers here. We are looking at product architecture that can support fiber and wireless. We are actively working on these.

Finally, how is Corning a preferred indoor 5G RAN vendor for tier 1 operators? He said that we have been through the DAS product portfolio that are deployed across large venues and stadiums, etc. On the RAN side, we are using Spider Cloud product family, making it easy to deploy 4G indoor small cell. We have now upgraded that to 5G for inbuilding wireless. We have some extensive deployments. Through the small cells that we have, we continue to evolve them, along with the introduction of mmWave small cells that are now commercially deployed. Sub6GHz band solutions are suitable too.