Two organizations have announced work to try to address the issue of RFFE complexity in a world that is desperately targeting simplicity and commonality (see leader above). One is Small Cell Forum (SCF), which has published a reference design to support an open RFFE architecture for sub-6 GHz (FR1) bands, that would allow any radio unit to work with any baseband or transceiver over common interfaces. The project is set out in a paper entitled ‘5G NR FR1 Reference Design: The case for a common, modular architecture for 5G NR FR1 small cell distributed radio units’, published last week. Much of the early commercial deployment of Open RANs, whether based on O-RAN Alliance, SCF or other interfaces, will focus on…