An Experimental Comparison Between Centralized and Distributed Testbeds for 5G-based Networks

In this paper two types of testbeds are setup and the results of metrics such as packet delivery ratio and hop to hop delay is compared in an environment resemble to foreseen 5G networks in terms of having device-to-device (D2D) type of communication and nodes with heterogeneous characteristics. The tested network compares the performance of nodes deployed Raspberry Pi3 B+ (RP3) as their independent operating system (RPU) with nodes that having a single processing unit such as personal computer (PC) as their operating system. The delay is measured for software and hardware process of both PCU and RPU. The result shows that the end-to-end delay increases with increase of number of hops, and the incur delay is higher on RPU compared to PCU. It is due to lower processing strength of RP3, entirely wireless transmission of control messages and packets in RPU, and distributed nature of RPU network compared to centralized PCU. The packet delivery ratio decreases with increase of number of hops due to more realistic distance between nodes, affect of ambient noise, and queuing as a result of increasing delay from node to node.