This work describes the architecture and vision of designing and implementing a new test infrastructure for 6G physical layer research at KU Leuven. The Testbed is designed for physical layer research and experimentation following several emerging trends, such as cell-free networking, integrated communication, sensing, open disaggregated Radio Access Networks, AI-Native design, and multiband operation. The software is almost entirely based on free and open-source software, making contributing and reusing any component easy. The open Testbed is designed to provide real-time and labeled data on all parts of the physical layer, from raw IQ data to synchronization statistics, channel state information, or symbol/bit/packet error rates. Real-time labeled datasets can be collected by synchronizing the physical layer data logging with a positioning and motion capture system. One of the main goals of the design is to make it open and accessible to external users remotely. Most tests and data captures can easily be automated, and experiment code can be remotely deployed using standard containers (e.g., Docker or Podman). Finally, the paper describes how the Testbed can be used for our research on joint communication and sensing, over-the-air synchronization, distributed processing, and AI in the loop.

翻译：本文介绍了在鲁汶大学设计和实施用于6G物理层研究的新型测试基础设施的架构与愿景。该测试平台专为物理层研究与实验而设计，遵循多项新兴技术趋势，包括无蜂窝网络、通信感知一体化、开放式解耦无线接入网络、AI原生设计及多频段协同操作。该平台软件几乎完全基于自由开源软件，使得任何组件的贡献与复用都极为便捷。开放式测试平台旨在提供物理层全环节的实时标记数据，涵盖从原始IQ数据到同步统计量、信道状态信息以及符号/比特/包错误率等各类指标。通过将物理层数据记录系统与定位及动作捕捉系统同步，可实现实时标记数据集的采集。该设计的核心目标之一是向远程外部用户开放访问权限。大多数测试与数据采集任务可实现自动化，实验代码可通过标准容器（如Docker或Podman）进行远程部署。最后，本文阐述了该测试平台如何应用于我们在通信感知一体化、空口同步、分布式处理及闭环人工智能等领域的研究工作。