The Open RF Association (OpenRF™) announced the next evolution of its mission to improve time-to-market, enhance operational benefits and reduce overall costs for wireless device OEMs. As part of these efforts, the organization is consolidating its existing five working groups into three–Software Interoperability, Hardware Interoperability and Compliance–to drive greater synergy between the software-to-hardware interface and improve efficiency as the association works to develop standards for a variety of use cases.

“Following the release of the initial OpenRF specification last year, we saw the opportunity to create synergy to better serve our member companies,” said OpenRF President Kevin Schoenrock. “Streamlining the working groups will increase the consortium’s ability to better focus on addressing the specific software, hardware and compliance challenges faced by OEMs today, ultimately creating an open, interoperable 5G interface specification driving a broad supplier ecosystem.”

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Consolidating Working Groups

When the Open RF Association was formed, it identified five key areas essential for specification development: the RF register map, software APIs, the hardware RF front-end and RFIC, RF power management and compliance. With the completion of the first phase of its plan to establish a standard for the RF front-end and RFIC ecosystem, the Open RF working groups have consolidated efforts along natural lines, merging the software-focused register map and software API working groups into the Software Interoperability Working Group, and combining the hardware and power management working groups into the Hardware Interoperability Working Group.

Together, these focused working groups will coordinate to deliver the key elements required to provide an interoperable HW, SW and compliance platform.

•    The new Software Interoperability Working Group, comprised of the Register Map and SW_API working groups, will increase its efforts to develop a register map framework and common hardware abstraction layer creating an agnostic RFIC and RFFE interface model.

•    The new Hardware Interoperability Working Group, comprised of the RF PMIC and Hardware RFFE working groups, will continue to maximize common front-end features and capabilities, and evolve the 5G user curve model.

•    The Compliance Workgroup remains unchanged, working to deliver the consortium's initial Level 1 compliance requirement end of this year.

“The next stage of the OpenRF working groups will focus on standardizing various RF front-end applications–the hardware features, capabilities and interface requirements associated with each, while still allowing for the flexibility needed for members to differentiate their products,” said OpenRF Hardware Working Group Chair Peter Bacon of MuRata.