EJL Wireless Research Analyzes Samsung Networks 5G NR CDU50

Half Moon Bay, CA July 13, 2022:  EJL Wireless Research is excited to announce a new report to its DesigN Analysis-Infrastructure (DNA-I) research series. The DNA-I series focuses on radio access network (RAN) equipment teardown reports. These reports provide invaluable insight into the design philosophies and architectures for the major radio equipment OEMs as well as a full bill of materials (BOM) for major semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) and passive component products and suppliers.

We have previously released DNA reports on 5G NR digital baseband units from Ericsson, Nokia Networks, and ZTE Corporation. The new report is on a Samsung Networks 5G NR digital baseband unit (BBU), the CDU50 (Cabinet-type Digital Uni). The CDU50 can be configured with up to three channel management cards (GCx), each of which supports a combination of up to 12 CPRI/eCPRI remote radio units (RRU) as well as three eCPRI massive MIMO units (MMU) in FR1 and FR2 frequency bands, depending on the number of cells, channel bandwidth, number of layers and throughput requirements. The CDU50 is the first true 5G NR digital baseband system from Samsung Networks, replacing the prior 4G LTE CDU30 product that only supported mixed-mode FDD/TDD-LTE.

The CDU50 design continues Samsung’s product philosophy for its digital baseband units to be a single 2U 19” rack-mounted indoor unit with upgradable hardware cards, either the main switch/transport card (GMx) or the channel management cards (GCx). It is also a standalone gNodeB that includes the distributed unit (DU) and centralized unit (CU) functions in a single box and can be deployed in existing mobile networks using a distributed radio access network topology (D-RAN).

“The 5G NR CDU50 gNodeB illustrates Samsung’s close partnership with Marvell Technology, Inc. and offers insights into the architecture for the switch transport L2/L3 functions as well as the L1 modem architecture within the digital unit and how future products supporting the separation of the distributed unit (DU) and centralized unit (CU) will be designed,” says Lum.■