19 percent more capacity without new spectrum: Virgin Media O2 tests AI radio site
At the operator's London headquarters, a Nokia base station with an Nvidia graphics chip uses AI to estimate radio channels. VMO2 calls it an early trial with more to come.
Symbolic image · Photo: Ashley Dace / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
British network operator Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) has fitted a showcase mobile site at its London headquarters with learning algorithms. The Nokia base station contains a card with an Nvidia graphics processor. The software estimates the quality of radio channels and adapts roughly every millisecond as users move and signal paths change.
The result, according to trade site The Mobile Network: 19 percent more capacity without any additional spectrum on the mast. "This is an initial trial, so we're expecting to get a lot more out of it," said Rob Joyce, director of mobile access engineering at VMO2. A graphics chip is not strictly necessary for this, he said, also pointing to Ericsson's silicon and its own AI roadmap.
In Joyce's view, distributed radio networks are better suited to such gains than centralized setups, which put heavy demands on fronthaul and backhaul links. Deutsche Telekom also reported lab tests with Nokia and Nvidia in October: there, AI-based channel estimation raised uplink throughput by 10 to 15 percent.