ARA-O-RAN: End-to-End Programmable O-RAN Living Lab for Agriculture and Rural Communities
Tianyi Zhang, Joshua Ofori Boateng, Taimoor UI Islam, Arsalan Ahmad,, Hongwei Zhang, Daji Qiao

TL;DR
ARA-O-RAN is a pioneering end-to-end programmable O-RAN testbed designed for rural and agricultural wireless networks, enabling research and development in open architecture and interoperability for rural connectivity.
Contribution
This paper introduces ARA-O-RAN, the first public O-RAN testbed tailored for rural and agricultural use cases with comprehensive hardware, software, and outdoor testing capabilities.
Findings
Supports outdoor rural and farm testing environments
Facilitates research on open wireless architectures for rural connectivity
Provides a scalable, programmable testbed for impactful wireless research
Abstract
As wireless networks evolve towards open architectures like O-RAN, testing, and integration platforms are crucial to address challenges like interoperability. This paper describes ARA-O-RAN, a novel O-RAN testbed established through the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) ARA platform. ARA provides an at-scale rural wireless living lab focused on technologies for digital agriculture and rural communities. As an O-RAN Alliance certified Open Testing and Integration Centre (OTIC), ARA launched ARA-O-RAN -- the first public O-RAN testbed tailored to rural and agriculture use cases, together with the end-to-end, whole-stack programmability. ARA-O-RAN uniquely combines support for outdoor testing across a university campus, surrounding farmlands, and rural communities with a 50-node indoor sandbox. The testbed facilitates vital R\&D to implement open architectures that can…
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Taxonomy
TopicsContext-Aware Activity Recognition Systems · Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development · IoT Networks and Protocols
