NextNav Inc., which happens to be a leader in next-generation terrestrial positioning, navigation and timing – PNT – and 3D geolocation solutions, went on to announce on May 14, 2026, its participation in the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation, which is a collaborative project hosted by the Linux Foundation in order to promote open, secure and interoperable Open RAN centralised unit and distributed unit – CU/DU – implementations.
The OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation offers an important means to most effectively direct OCUDU development in support of 5G and initial AI-native 6G services by industry vendors.
NextNav will also work alongside the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation community as a member to help mould the design, approval, and implementation of the 3GPP Positioning Reference Signal – PRS – within the Foundation’s OCUDU Technical Project codebase, enabling the open source RAN stack to fully support Integrated Sensing and Communications – ISAC – and PNT use cases in 5G as well as future 6G networks. NextNav brings almost 20 years of PNT technology creation, which includes field-proven experience from operating the first 5G PNT network in the world, launched in Santa Clara, California.
According to NextNav’s vice president of product development, Santanu Dasgupta, “Resilient PNT is a national security imperative. We’re excited to partner with the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation and the Department of War’s FutureG office to make ISAC and PNT built-in features of wireless networks. Scaling this requires an open, trusted foundation the whole industry can build on. Joining OCUDU brings NextNav’s technology into a broader community, ensuring PRS-based ISAC and PNT become native capabilities in open source 5G and 6G networks.”
NextNav and the OCUDU Technical Project have integrated PRS features into an open source foundation to speed up a triple-purpose vision when it comes to public cellular, private wireless, as well as hybrid terrestrial/satellite networks as an alternative and backup to GPS.
SVP and general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, the Linux Foundation, Arpit Joshiura says that “OCUDU EF was created to bring the industry together around open, secure, and interoperable CU/DU implementations for open source RAN. We’re pleased to welcome NextNav to the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation and look forward to their contributions as we continue building a collaborative, vendor-neutral ecosystem that can accelerate real-world adoption of open source RAN infrastructure.”
One of the primary goals of the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation is to develop a public-private commercial and research ecosystem and open-source stack for open source CU and DU, which is a part of the open source RAN targeting the delivery of the open source RAN infrastructure which will power AI-native networks of the future. This is exactly where the physical world and AI come into contact. As AI systems grow more dependent on accurate understanding of where and when things happen in the physical world, robust positioning and timing are rapidly evolving into a fundamental system. That reality is reflected in the OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation’s AI-native Open Source RAN roadmap that has in it open source 5G and 6G networks. The incorporation of PRS is an ideal match for enabling physical AI and integrated sensing, as well as AI-driven optimisation capacities that will safeguard public safety, national security, and the economy.