Beyond 5G Lab
Beyond 5G Lab
NTNU's Beyond 5G (B5G) Lab is an experimental infrastructure for applied research on the 5G technology and beyond. It provides access to a state-of-the-art industrial 5G solution, different 5G devices, routers, and modems, as well as programmable network and compute devices. It aims to enable interested partners and researchers to gain hands-on experience with 5G systems and to validate their use cases in a realistic environment.
Setup and Architecture
The current infrastructure consists of several different 5G devices, modems and gateways, servers, including both a commercial Nokia setup as well as different flavors of open source deployments (srsRAN, OpenAirInterface, Open5GS, ONF Aether) using Software-Defined Radio (SDR) components.
- 5G standalone UEs, modems, and routers
- 5 Nokia XR20
- 6 Quectel devices (RM 500/520/502)
- 1 Zyxel 5G NR5101
- 3 Teltonika RUTX50
- 1 Siemens Scalance M856-1 EU
- Additional research hardware
- 2 APS BF2556X Tofino-based WSW
- 2 NoviSwitch 2122 OF switches
- 2 Netronome Agilio CX 10G smart
- 11 Dell PowerEdge R730/R740/R750
Commercial Setup
- HPE EL1000: Nokia edge DAC server
- Nokia 7250 IXRe: routing function and access point connections
- 5G AirScale system module
- 4 5G ASiR picoRRHs (indoor)
- 1 5G microRRH (outdoor)
Open Source Setup
The open source setup offers increased configurability and finer-grained performance measurements as well as code-level adjustments to tailor the system for specific use cases.
- Cores
- RAN / gNB Implementations
- OpenAirInterface
- srsRAN
- Various SDR hardware options: Ettus USRP B210, NI USRP-2954R (=USRP X310)
- UE Options
- Quectel USB modems
- Nokia XR20 COTS phones
Exemplary Use Cases and Ongoing Research
- Completed and ongoing master's theses as well as various joint publications
- Performance - End-to-End and Per-Component
- B5G Performance Benchmarking
- Towards Active Performance Monitoring in 5G Industrial Scenarios
- Comparative Analysis of Traffic and Performance Characteristics in Open Source 5G Core Components
- Parameterizing 5G New Radio - Comparative Measurements on Throughput and Delay
- Analytical Modeling of 5G New Radio Performance
- Dynamic QoS Optimization using Runtime Analysis of gNB Measurements
- Integration with Verticals
- Smart Grid: Differential Protection
- Industrial Automation, IT/OT Integration
- Explorative Assessment of the IT/OT Integration of Statnett's Digital Substations
- Security
- Secure IT/OT Convergence over Private 5G Networks
- An Analysis of the Private 5G Network Threat Landscape
- Security Considerations of Public and Private 5G System Interplay
Instrumentation & Automation
Our infrastructure allows conducting experiments in an automated and reproducible fashion using Ansible playbooks. Observation, live monitoring, and visualization of relevant metrics is achieved by using Prometheus and Grafana. Finally, utilizing network tap devices and precise time stamping allows deducing fine-grained measurements of KPIs such as throughput or end-to-end delays, and to decompose the impact of the different elements on these KPIs.
Setup for Measuring One-way Delays
Decomposition of RTTs
System Status Dashboard
Published Results - Parameterizing 5G New Radio
Research Questions
- Can 5G NR measurements be effectively automated to produce reliable and reproducible results?
- Are QoS measurements reproducible across similar but non-identical 5G campus testbeds?
- Are QoS measurements reproducible across different gNB implementations?
- How does gNB configuration impact the performance of 5G NR?
Outcomes
- Systematic differences between gNB implementations offer insights into respective performance trade-offs
- Systematic impact of configuration parameters such as downlink-uplink ratio, bandwidht, and slot configuration paves the way for tailoring configuration towards specific use cases and their requirements
- High degree of heterogeneity regarding achieved performance, even under similar conditions
