This project will create experimental facilities to support research into wireless networked systems, and transition the world’s largest wireless network emulator to being a shared instrument available to the broader research community.
Wireless communication networks have the potential to provide faster communications, broader coverage, and lower latency through research and innovation. However, the US wireless research community is still lacking a shared wireless network emulation facility, where researchers can test their experimental innovations in large-scale realistic simulation environments, without disrupting operating wireless networks. The various existing wireless emulators and testbeds can only support disjoint, small-scale and ad-hoc experimentation, making rigorous and repeatable experimental evaluation of wireless networked systems difficult.
This project aims to bridge this gap by transitioning the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA's) Colosseum, the world’s largest wireless network emulator, from private use to being a shared programmable instrument, open to and usable by the research community housed at the Kostas Research Institute at Northeastern University. Colosseum is a massive 256-by-256-channel radio frequency emulator supported with 256 programmable software defined radios, capable of emulating full-stack communications with abundant computational capabilities and the ability to implement Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning algorithms, and hardware in the loop. It can emulate diverse operational environments from open fields to dense urban blocks, support cellular networks (4G, 5G), IoT, cognitive radio, ad hoc networks, edge computing, and cloud RAN research, and create real-time high-fidelity radio scenarios like traffic generation, timing, and GPS synthesis. For the first time, researchers across academia, government and industry will be able to experience in a single instrument the scale and abstractions of packet-level simulators, the flexibility of software radios, and the fidelity of professional channel emulation.
In addition to making Colosseum accessible to the US wireless research community at large, this project will extend several of Colosseum’s capabilities by developing new scenario creation, channel reconfiguration capabilities, and data visualization tools, as well as new edge computing, machine learning, and data analytics functionalities. It will also increase outreach to future Colosseum users, further extending and accelerating research in wireless networked systems.