# Open-source RANs in practice: an over-the-air deployment for 5G MEC

## TL;DR

This paper presents an open-source RAN deployment over-the-air for 5G MEC, enabling easier development and testing of edge applications with low latency, using a flexible and modifiable infrastructure.

## Contribution

It introduces an open-source RAN system with OTA deployment and DevOps capabilities, simplifying edge application deployment and enabling research in a familiar environment.

## Key findings

- Achieved 7.5MB/s throughput in OTA testing
- Latency measured at 21ms, suitable for edge applications
- Demonstrated system's flexibility for research and prototyping

## Abstract

Edge computing that leverages cloud resources to the proximity of user devices is seen as the future infrastructure for distributed applications. However, developing and deploying edge applications, that rely on cellular networks, is burdensome. Such network infrastructures are often based on proprietary components, each with unique programming abstractions and interfaces. To facilitate straightforward deployment of edge applications, we introduce OSS based RAN on OTA commercial spectrum with DevOps capabilities. OSS allows software modifications and integrations of the system components, e.g., EPC and edge hosts running applications, required for new data pipelines and optimizations not addressed in standardization. Such an OSS infrastructure enables further research and prototyping of novel end-user applications in an environment familiar to software engineers without telecommunications background. We evaluated the presented infrastructure with E2E OTA testing, resulting in 7.5MB/s throughput and latency of 21ms, which shows that the presented infrastructure provides low latency for edge applications.