The brand new “digital twin” tech is already being utilized by Constitution for its 5G planning
Information analytics agency Heavy.AI and Nvidia on Tuesday introduced HeavyRF, a brand new community planning and operations instrument for telcos that leverages Nvidia’s Omniverse metaverse expertise. The announcement got here as a part of a flurry of stories from Nvidia throughout CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote handle for the corporate’s fall GTC developer convention, presently underway just about this yr.
The businesses say the “digital twin” idea behind HeavyRF will help community operators higher plan and deploy their 5G community buildouts. Heavy.AI says the tech is already within the fingers of Constitution Communications, which is utilizing it to plan 5G buildouts of their Spectrum service.
“We’re a expertise platform,” mentioned Heavy.AI CEO Jon Kondo in a latest interview with RCR Wi-fi Information. “We began in huge information analytics. Our software program permits individuals to course of large volumes of knowledge. We leverage Nvidia GPUs (Graphics Processing Models) to do parallel processing.”
The corporate counts telecom firms, authorities companies and utilities amongst its shoppers, mentioned Kondo. Heavy.AI combines information from no matter sources the consumer wants, public, personal, or elsewhere.
“It’s for when individuals have to have the ability to have a look at all the info, and never simply downsample or pre-aggregate and such,” he added.
With Communication Service Suppliers (CSPs) already amongst its shoppers, Kondo mentioned that the 4G to 5G transition laid naked an issue: Radio Frequency (RF) planning for 5G tower installs. Understanding how RF alerts propagate isn’t any imply feat, and till now, simulation instruments haven’t supplied community operators a lot flexibility.
“This can enable community planners to have the ability to simulate bodily correct information in a digital world,” defined Kondo. That features variability like climate phenomena, foliage, sign reflection and extra. It’s quicker than “old-style calculations,” mentioned Kondo, and fewer cumbersome than having to ship techs out to the sector to do measurements and estimates.
“The Omniverse platform is a digital twin platform. It’s within the metaverse, because the world likes to name it,” mentioned Ronnie Vasishta, Nvidia’s SVP of telecom. “Omniverse is the platform that allows digital twin realization and visualization. I feel this provides important advantages to the telcos as they’re going by way of this very difficult deployment, monetization, and optimization.”
HeavyRF can be utilized to reply questions for telcos scuffling with infrastructure buildout earlier than ever placing gear within the area, mentioned Vasishta, enumerating a few of the questions they cope with.
“The place are all of the business buildings that have to get protection? The place are the residential buildings. The place do you have to put a tower? How excessive ought to the tower be? What output energy ought to the tower antennas have? What impact does climate have on RF propagation? And as we transfer into materials description, what sort of impact as glass versus concrete have,” mentioned Vasishta.
“These are issues which can be extremely troublesome to have the ability to do at any scale, and any diploma of accuracy. The 3D visualization of that, but additionally the ingestion of that information, actual time and the output into a visible world will unlock capabilities which have simply not been doable earlier than,” he added.
This isn’t the primary time Nvidia has pitched Omniverse as a 5G assist for telecoms. In 2021, Nvidia and Ericsson introduced a collaboration to make use of Omniverse Enterprise as a foundation for determining optimum 5G tower placement. Kondo sees HeavyRF as an extra evolution of that idea, however with a a lot larger stage of granularity.
“What Ericsson did is a really tower-accurate form of factor,” mentioned Kondo. “What we’re bringing in is huge situation planning.”
In a press pre-briefing previous the GTC keynote, Nvidia VP of Omniverse Richard Kerris supplied his perspective.
“Ericsson truly got here to us some time again and confirmed us some issues they have been doing interior metropolis for his or her 5G antenna propagation after which constructed out the town in Stockholm to do much more. The entire thought is that Omniverse is a platform that may be constructed upon and customised,” he mentioned.
“It’s an enormous, enormous alternative when you have got a $2 trillion market, and it can save you doubtlessly billions of {dollars},” mentioned Kerris. “I anticipate we’ll see extra firms on this house as properly.”
Determining RF propagation is a vital a part of the equation, mentioned Kondo, however that doesn’t inform your complete story.
One of many distinctive capabilities that we now have is we will usher in buyer information,” he defined. “So that you could possibly put this tower in to get the perfect propagation, but it surely solely impacts 1000 prospects. Whereas you place one some other place that is probably not as technically excellent, but it surely covers 50,000 prospects. So, you’ll be able to scale back churn in your buyer base since you’ve improved that high quality of service.”
Kondo mentioned that information can come from many sources, together with satellite tv for pc imagery, LIDAR information, buyer muddle information and extra. “That’s actually been our premise from the very begin: soak up a number of streams of knowledge, totally different varieties in large quantities, and layer them collectively to present you a real view,” he mentioned.
The tech’s focus proper now will assist CSPs with macro cell tower installs, however Kondo mentioned that Heavy.AI will add small cell assist as time goes on as properly. One other vital space that CSPs are asking for assist with is energy consumption, he mentioned.
“Should you’ve acquired the imagery, we will help do this,” he mentioned.
