Open RAN's AI era puts interoperability and testing in focus. Image: RCR Wireless News During the RCR Wireless News' Intelligent RAN Forum 2026, Viavi marketing manager Owen O'Donnell and Battelle vice president of product development Mark Reudink examined the evolution of open and intelligent RAN. In sum - what to know Openness expands innovation - Open RAN is bringing more vendors and solutions into the ecosystem, while network intelligence enables new use cases. Integration accelerates - Battelle's Mark Reudink said integration timelines for active antenna units have fallen from months to weeks as vendor software and testing platforms mature. AI needs validation - Viavi's Owen O'Donnell said testing is critical as AI applications influence network decisions and operators benchmark competing solutions. Open RAN and network intelligence are increasingly developing together, expanding the number of vendors, applications and use cases across the RAN ecosystem. But as intelligent applications become more prominent, interoperability, integration, and testing remain important challenges. The issues were discussed during the RCR Wireless News' Intelligent RAN Forum 2026, where Viavi Solutions marketing manager Owen O'Donnell and Battelle vice president of product development Mark Reudink examined the evolution of open and intelligent RAN. For O'Donnell, openness and network intelligence can provide operators with complementary benefits, including greater vendor participation and progress toward more autonomous networks. "I think, in a way, openness and network intelligence is nearly a perfect storm for the operators because the openness is bringing in new players, it's increasing the playing field, it's reducing the cost, while network intelligence is allowing operators to head towards the goal of fully autonomous networks," O'Donnell said. He said potential benefits include reduced capex and opex, faster time to market, more streamlined network operations, and increased competitiveness through innovation. Reudink said the Open RAN ecosystem has also matured from an integration perspective. He said Battelle's first integration of its active antenna radio unit with a distributed unit took months, but that timeline has subsequently fallen to weeks. Reudink also pointed to applications enabled by the broader ecosystem, including network steering and location solutions for factory floors where GPS may not be available. O'Donnell said the RIC has moved from being a specification on paper toward practical testing in production labs, while a growing range of use cases includes network-slice assurance, massive MIMO, signaling-storm detection, SMO scale testing, drone-swarm detection, and application-collision testing. O'Donnell also cited a Viavi and NTT Docomo demonstration involving AI-driven beamforming control that could improve system throughput by up to 20% by reducing control overhead. Testing remains important as Open RAN deployments become more complex, O'Donnell said. "The challenges are interoperability, integration, compliance and standards, security, increased attack surface, and regular software updates," he said. "So they're all the primary challenges that come with Open RAN." He said trust in AI applications is another major issue, particularly when applications are influencing network decisions without a human in the loop. AI applications are only as good as the data used to train them, while operator network data can be proprietary and confidential. O'Donnell said synthetic data can provide an alternative. Viavi's AI RAN Scenario Generator can create RAN scenarios, run iterations to train AI models and then validate their performance against scenarios. Reudink also emphasized the importance of common data approaches across vendors. "The data that comes in is fundamental to be able to have accurate AI models, to be able to really implement changes in that network, be it anything from smarter beam management to network steering," he said. The speakers also discussed the evolution of the AI-RAN Alliance and the move toward greater collaboration between vendors, operators, and other industry participants. Reudink said standardized metrics and data are important as multiple vendors and systems become involved. The discussion also highlighted the role of multi-vendor testing environments. O'Donnell said operators can benchmark competing AI applications in their own labs using real or tailored network scenarios, including evaluating energy savings alongside quality-of-experience impacts.

Battelle chooses Ennoia Technologies to help advance characterization of RavenStar Open RAN radio unit. Columbus, OH (BUSINESS WIRE) - Battelle, one of the world's largest independent nonprofit research and development organizations, announced today that it has selected Ennoia Technologies, Inc., an AI-RAN observability company, to advance performance characterization of the RavenStar(TM) Open RAN radio unit (O-RU). Battelle is applying Ennoia's agentic AI observability software to deepen the massive MIMO and beamforming performance analysis behind the radio, automating the O-RAN Open Fronthaul packet-level analysis using AI that currently takes significant manual effort. RavenStar(TM) is an ultra-wideband, steerable massive MIMO radio unit with an integrated antenna, designed and manufactured in the United States, operating across bands from 600 MHz to 7 GHz and supporting multiple protocols simultaneously from a single array. In February 2025, RavenStar(TM) became the first product validated under O-RAN and 3GPP test specifications at the VIAVI VALOR(TM) lab, achieving 99% of theoretical uplink and downlink throughput. In June 2026, it was awarded a National Spectrum Consortium contract to advance spectrum sharing technology. Ennoia's AI-RAN observability software captures and analyzes O-RAN Open Fronthaul traffic at IQ-sample resolution, allowing engineers to verify O-RAN compliance, measure massive MIMO and beamforming performance, and isolate root cause directly from the fronthaul. Its agentic AI automates the packet-level inspection that manual methods measure in weeks, completing the same analysis in minutes and making it practical to characterize and validate a massive MIMO O-RAN radio without extensive manual analysis. The software is non-intrusive and vendor-neutral, and runs entirely offline, keeping fronthaul captures and radio design data inside the customer's own environment. "Bringing a radio like RavenStar to market takes more than strong hardware - it takes rigorous, reproducible evidence that the design performs the way we say it does," said Mark Reudink, VP for Product Development at Battelle. "Ennoia's AI-driven fronthaul analysis software is intended to give us deep visibility into radio performance and to validate our design targets." "Fronthaul analysis has always been manual, expert-driven work measured in weeks, and that is exactly where AI-RAN based observability changes the equation," said Sridhar Rajagopal, Ph.D., Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of Ennoia Technologies. "We are proud to work with Battelle and put that to work on a radio as advanced as RavenStar." About Battelle Every day, the people of Battelle apply science and technology to solving what matters most. At major technology centers and national laboratories around the world, Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio since its founding in 1929, Battelle serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries. For more information, visit www.battelle.org. About Ennoia Technologies Ennoia Technologies, Inc. is an AI-RAN observability company building AI agents that deliver high-resolution visibility and analysis for the radio access network. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in Plano, Texas, Ennoia develops AI agents for wireless edge networks powered by small language models (SLMs), with a focus on intelligent planning, installation, and monitoring of RAN deployments. Its agent-based architecture is designed to reduce both CAPEX and OPEX by delivering deep, actionable insights down to the physical layer, using non-intrusive, vendor-neutral tools that run entirely offline to ensure privacy, portability, and resilience in the field. A member of the AI-RAN Alliance and a recipient of its 2025 Innovation Award, Ennoia helps operators, vendors, and researchers automate, validate, and optimize their 5G-Advanced and 6G networks with high resolution RAN visibility. For more information, visit www.ennoia-tech.com. (C) 2026 Business Wire, Inc. Like what you are reading? Join your peers

Battelle wins two 2026 Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence. Business Wire COLUMBUS, Ohio, August 18, 2026-(BUSINESS WIRE)-Battelle announced today that it has been named a winner in two categories in the third annual Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence. Battelle received gold and bronze honors for technologies that address STEM education and workforce development and next-generation wireless communications infrastructure. "This recognition reflects what's possible when education, industry and communities work together to prepare students for the future. At Battelle Education, we're focused on helping educators inspire students through meaningful STEM learning experiences while building pathways to high-demand careers," said Wes Hall, Senior Vice President Philanthropy and Education at Battelle. "We're honored that the Stevie Awards recognized both the promising impact of our programs today and their potential to strengthen tomorrow's workforce." Both of Battelle's nominations were selected from over 700 nominations submitted this year by organizations of all sizes in 37 nations and territories for consideration. More than 180 professionals worldwide participated in the judging process to select this year's honorees. "This recognition validates Battelle's vision for fundamentally rethinking wireless infrastructure. Judges noted RavenStar's innovation in multi-band, software-defined RF architecture and its potential to reduce infrastructure complexity while supporting future wireless standards," said Thomas Kent, business line director of Advanced Microsystem Solutions at Battelle. "We're proud to see that engineering innovation recognized as we continue advancing the technology toward broader deployment." Battelle's winning nominations for 2026 include: * Gold - The Battelle Education team was recognized as the "Educational or Research Institution of the Year" for the Education Technology category for transforming STEM learning at scale through innovative educator development and workforce readiness programs. Its initiatives, including the K-2 Nuclear STEM Education program, Battelle Teacher Academy and Manufacturing Pathways Pilot, have reached more than 2.3 million students, 5,000 educators and 3,000 schools and organizations, helping strengthen educator confidence, expand career-connected learning and prepare students for high-demand STEM careers. Judges praised the organization's measurable outcomes, scalable programming and significant workforce development impact.