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、可编程和智能化网络的转型，取决于能否成功实现同时满足以下条件的公共与专用5G部署：(i) 完全由软件驱动，且 (ii) 性能与传统单体系统相当。这需要硬件加速以扩展物理层性能、端到端集成与测试，以及射频环境的周密规划。本文阐述了东北大学X5G测试平台如何通过以下创新应对上述挑战：首次部署基于NVIDIA Aerial RAN CoLab（ARC）的8节点网络，采用面向物理层的Aerial软件开发套件并在图形处理单元上加速，同时通过小蜂窝论坛功能应用平台接口实现与OpenAirInterface开源项目高层协议的集成。我们探讨了软件集成方案、网络基础设施以及用于射频规划的数字孪生框架。随后，针对每个基站使用多达4台商用现成智能手机，通过iPerf和视频流应用进行性能基准测试，测得小区下行速率超过500 Mbps，上行速率超过45 Mbps。