Modular and Reconfigurable Testbed For 5G Systems And Applications

The fifth generation (5G) cellular standards operating in various millimeter frequency bands, are the proposed next telecommunications standards beyond the current 4G standards. The specifications of 5G technology are currently being standardized by international regulatory agencies and they hold promise for a wide array of applications ranging from transportation to health. Testing of this standard across a matrix of specifications and applications presents a daunting challenge. To overcome this, a 5G testbed design which is based on reconfigurable components enabled by Software Defined Networks (SDNs) and Software Defined Radios (SDRs) has been presented in this paper. The reconfigurable measurement hardware has been designed such that it can be integrated across all the layers of TCP/IP protocol through an open-source software defined architecture. Programmability is a key feature of this architecture, and this has been addressed by a Software Development Kit (SDK). The SDK contains pre-built IP, a baseline end to end stack implementation, and an application programming interface (API) for accessing different features of the platform. The testbed has been designed with a modular hardware and scalable software architecture so that it can facilitate the development of numerous 5G applications in the long run, allowing multiple users to operate it, thus making the testbed self-sustainable over the years. Keywords–testbed; scalability; modular; 5G; health; transportation; energy.