The CTTC 5G end-to-end experimental platform: Integrating heterogeneous wireless/optical networks, distributed cloud, and IoT devices

TL;DR

This paper introduces the CTTC 5G end-to-end experimental platform, which integrates heterogeneous wireless, optical networks, distributed cloud, and IoT devices to support diverse IoT applications and services.

Contribution

It presents the first known platform capable of reproducing integrated heterogeneous networks, distributed cloud, and IoT scenarios for 5G research and development.

Findings

Demonstrates integration of wireless, optical, cloud, and IoT networks.

Supports diverse IoT applications in a unified platform.

Enables end-to-end testing of 5G network scenarios.

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) will facilitate a wide variety of applications in different domains, such as smart cities, smart grids, industrial automation (Industry 4.0), smart driving, assistance of the elderly, and home automation. Billions of heterogeneous smart devices with different application requirements will be connected to the networks and will generate huge aggregated volumes of data that will be processed in distributed cloud infrastructures. On the other hand, there is also a general trend to deploy functions as software (SW) instances in cloud infrastructures [e.g., network function virtualization (NFV) or mobile edge computing (MEC)]. Thus, the next generation of mobile networks, the fifth-generation (5G), will need not only to develop new radio interfaces or waveforms to cope with the expected traffic growth but also to integrate heterogeneous networks from end to end (E2E) with distributed cloud resources to deliver E2E IoT and mobile services. This article presents the E2E 5G platform that is being developed by the Centre Tecnol\`ogic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), the first known platform capable of reproducing such an ambitious scenario.