An Open, Programmable, Multi-vendor 5G O-RAN Testbed with NVIDIA ARC and OpenAirInterface

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive 5G testbed integrating NVIDIA ARC and OpenAirInterface, demonstrating high-performance, scalable, and programmable 5G networks with real-world testing and RF planning capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces the first 8-node NVIDIA ARC-based 5G testbed integrated with OpenAirInterface, showcasing hardware acceleration, software integration, and RF planning for scalable 5G deployments.

Findings

Achieved over 500 Mbps downlink cell rate with smartphones.

Demonstrated successful integration of NVIDIA ARC with open-source 5G software.

Profiled network performance using real-world applications.

Abstract

The transition of fifth generation (5G) cellular systems to softwarized, programmable, and intelligent networks depends on successfully enabling public and private 5G deployments that are (i) fully software-driven and (ii) with a performance at par with that of traditional monolithic systems. This requires hardware acceleration to scale the Physical (PHY) layer performance, end-to-end integration and testing, and careful planning of the Radio Frequency (RF) environment. In this paper, we describe how the X5G testbed at Northeastern University has addressed these challenges through the first 8-node network deployment of the NVIDIA Aerial RAN CoLab (ARC), with the Aerial Software Development Kit (SDK) for the PHY layer, accelerated on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), and through its integration with higher layers from the OpenAirInterface (OAI) open-source project through the Small Cell Forum (SCF) Functional Application Platform Interface (FAPI). We discuss software integration, the network infrastructure, and a digital twin framework for RF planning. We then profile the performance with up to 4 Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) smartphones for each base station with iPerf and video streaming applications, measuring a cell rate higher than 500 Mbps in downlink and 45 Mbps in uplink.