PAWR Platform COSMOS: Cloud Enhanced Open Software Defined Mobile Wireless Testbed for City-Scale Deployment

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project creates a city-scale platform for advanced wireless research that will be deployed over the period 2018 - 2023 in New York City, NY. This Cloud Enhanced Open Software Defined Mobile Wireless Testbed for City-Scale Deployment (COSMOS) supports at-scale experimentation of novel advanced wireless broadband and communication technologies in the sub-6 GHz bands and in the millimeter wave frequency bands in a densely populated, urban setting. The project features interactions with regional networks and smart community initiatives including municipalities, non-profits, and various tech communities with interest in contributing to and/or using the testbed for application development. The ability to use this platform by early adopter companies/startups, global telecom industry and application developers to evaluate technologies in their pre-commercial phase will have a significant positive impact on the speed of innovation in the data networking and application domains. This effort will also benefit educators and students at all levels of study in communications-related disciplines. Radio nodes in COSMOS provide a mix of fully programmable software defined radios (SDRs) for flexible wireless experimentation as well as commercial hardware capable of supporting networking and applications research with currently available end-user devices. COSMOS is built in a bottom-up manner with commodity components and customized open-source hardware and software modules. The developed wireless platforms cover the full range of spectrum including the sub 6 GHz bands used for today's services as well as emerging 28 GHz and 60 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands. SDRs utilize a new design that achieves an order-of-magnitude performance headroom over current technology, achieving real-time processing of wide bandwidths (~500 MHz) via novel acceleration techniques. The COSMOS platform incorporates fast programmable core network technology to keep pace with significant increases in wireless link bandwidth and to effectively integrate emerging radio access networks with edge cloud computing. The design includes novel 100 Gbps+ fiber, free space optical, and microwave backhaul technologies interconnected with a software-defined network (SDN) switching fabric for minimum latency and flexibility in setting up experimental network topologies. Sub-microsecond optical switching technology offers the option of passive Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) switch fabrics and radio over fiber interfaces for the purpose of achieving ultra-low latency connections to edge computing services, which will be built in as an integral part of the system. Together, this will enable comprehensive end-to-end experimentation across diverse applications and users with tools for scientific workflow management, collaboration, and artifact sharing, all with a goal towards promoting rigorous standards for reproducibility in this field. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.