CloudEmu: A Trace-Driven Cloud-Native Emulation Testbed for Vehicle Video Uplink over Cellular Networks

TL;DR

CloudEmu is a cloud-native, trace-driven emulation testbed for vehicle video uplink over cellular networks, enabling repeatable, low-cost, and realistic testing for autonomous vehicle communication.

Contribution

It introduces a novel, scalable, and route-aware emulation framework that combines the fidelity of real-world trace replay with the flexibility of cloud-based simulation.

Findings

Enables repeatable vehicle video uplink experiments under identical network conditions.

Couples real cellular and position traces with traffic replay on commodity hardware.

Allows low-cost, controlled testing of production video-uplink stacks in a cloud environment.

Abstract

We present CloudEmu, a trace-driven, cloud-native cellular-emulation testbed for vehicle video uplink communication. Reliable, low-latency video uplink over cellular networks is essential for remote monitoring of autonomous vehicles. However, existing testbeds fall into two extremes. Physical-vehicle platforms provide realism but are costly and make validation under identical network conditions difficult, whereas simulations are inexpensive and reproducible but generally cannot replay field-measured end-to-end performance dynamics without substantial calibration or readily run production video-uplink stacks. A software-defined, cloud-native emulation approach can combine the fidelity of trace-driven replay with the agility and scalability that network softwarization principles offer. To this end, we propose CloudEmu that replays time-synchronized cellular and position traces, collected once from vehicles, on commodity Linux-based virtual vehicle and video-receiver nodes. A Linux-based emulation framework couples traffic replay with position replay, tying network dynamics to each point along the route and enabling repeatable, route-aware experiments without repeated on-road trials. Our demo deploys a production-grade video-uplink stack on CloudEmu, allowing attendees to experience low-cost, repeatable trials and controlled comparisons under identical replayed network conditions.