The Orbit Radio Grid as a Flexible Large-Scale Community Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Network Research

Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Brunswick NJ

Investigators

Abstract

The ORBIT Radio Grid as a Flexible Large-Scale Community Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Network Research The 400-node ORBIT radio grid facility at Rutgers was developed under the NSF NRT program (2003-07) with the objective of enabling realistic and reproducible wireless network experiments at scale. The ORBIT radio grid was first made available to research users on an informal basis in Oct 2005, and since then, has rapidly become a de-facto community resource for evaluation of emerging wireless network architectures and protocols. ORBIT is also being used as a proof-of-concept platform for validating wireless aspects of NSF?s GENI future Internet infrastructure. This project is aimed at supporting community release of the ORBIT radio grid testbed on a more formal basis. This involves several key technical upgrades necessary to support emerging experimental needs, as well as enhancements to service software and operations staffing necessary for a 24/7 shared testbed facility. Specific work items to be carried out in this project include: ? Feature upgrades including support for software-defined radios, improved topology and mobility control, and wired + wireless network emulation. ? Virtualization of the radio grid to support multiple simultaneous experiments. ? Improved ORBIT user portal, along with enhanced software and operations support services. ? ?ORBIT kit? development and establishment of an open-source software repository. Major deliverables of the project include community release of the ORBIT radio grid testbed with enhanced technical and service support features in year 2, followed by an upgrade with GNU/URSP2 software radios in year 3.