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.

翻译：第五代（5G）蜂窝系统向软件化、可编程及智能化网络的转型，关键在于成功实现满足以下条件的公有与私有5G部署：（i）完全由软件驱动，且（ii）性能与传统一体化系统相当。这需要硬件加速以扩展物理层性能、端到端集成与测试，以及射频环境的精细规划。本文阐述了东北大学X5G测试平台如何通过以下方式应对这些挑战：首次部署包含8个节点的NVIDIA Aerial RAN CoLab（ARC）网络，采用面向物理层的Aerial软件开发套件（SDK），通过图形处理器（GPU）实现加速，并通过小型蜂窝论坛（SCF）功能应用平台接口（FAPI），将其与OpenAirInterface（OAI）开源项目的高层协议栈集成。我们讨论了软件集成方案、网络基础设施以及用于射频规划的数字孪生框架。随后，我们通过每基站最多4部商用现成（COTS）智能手机，利用iPerf与视频流应用测试性能，测得小区下行链路速率超过500 Mbps，上行链路速率达45 Mbps。