Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communications by Honghao Gao & Kuang Li & Xiaoxian Yang & Yuyu Yin

Author:Honghao Gao & Kuang Li & Xiaoxian Yang & Yuyu Yin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030432157
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

2 Related Work

Several testbed initiatives and projects already offer possibilities for researchers and telecommunication engineers to experiment in real mobile network infrastructures. Different approaches ranging from infrastructures fully owned and operated by the projects to Virtual Mobile Network Operator (vMNO) models relying on commercial MNO infrastructures have been taken to provide these experimentation platforms to the research community.

The 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP) initiative launched three large-scale end-to-end 5G test facilities as part of the European Horizon 2020 programme in 2018. These facilities and their infrastructure is developed, operated and owned by dedicated projects called 5GENESIS, 5G EVE and 5G-VINNI. For example, 5GENESIS [20] comprises of five inter-connected large-scale local sites in different European countries which together provide a pan-European test platform addressing multiple vertical use cases. 5G EVE and 5G-VINNI have similar approaches with different sites and vertical industry focus areas. The RAN part of these facilities is based on commercial 5G equipment, but the coverage is limited to the local sites.

Another set of inter-connected test facilities in Europe are made available to the researchers by the Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) initiative, which provides technology laboratories equipped with components to perform experimental research also in mobile networks. However, the experiments must usually be executed inside the laboratories where the RAN part of the infrastructure is simulated or offered as local amendments to the wired infrastructure in pre-defined local sites as in the 5GINFIRE [36] project.

The Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) program offers large-scale Internet testbeds for researchers in the US. The SciWiNet [7] project has added support for wireless networking systems research into the platform based on the vMNO model. SciWiNet offers cellular connectivity via Sprint’s 3G, WiMAX, and LTE networks. Consequently, SciWiNet is able to provide a test facility for a variety of mobile network services and vertical industry use cases. However, the underlying RAN infrastructure is not under full control of the testbed provider and the testbed user.

EuWireless extends these existing test infrastructure concepts by introducing the possibility to share and combine resources of the existing research testbeds with those of commercial MNO networks. Integration with MNO networks offers enhanced coverage for large-scale field tests and better access to scarce regulated resources such as licensed spectrum. In order to avoid the CAPEX/OPEX challenges related to fully owned network infrastructures and the limited possibilities to manage the network infrastructure as a vMNO, EuWireless combines the advantages of both by relying on a virtualisation concept. The selected approach allows the creation of generic connectivity slices as the baseline infrastructure for a virtual testbed. The desired network and service functionality can then be built on top of the baseline virtual infrastructure with additional slices defined by the EuWireless user.

In the European Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme, a variety of projects have also studied the reference architectures and technology enablers for 5G systems. Majority of these projects have been executed under the coordination of 5G-PPP, which has managed the jointly funded 5G project portfolio in Europe since 2015.

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