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 Research Cloud (ARC), with the Aerial 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 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、可编程和智能网络的转型，取决于能否成功实现公共与私有5G部署，使其具备以下两个特征：（i）完全由软件驱动，（ii）性能与传统一体化系统相当。这需要硬件加速来扩展物理层性能、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方式应对这些挑战：首次部署包含8个节点的NVIDIA Aerial Research Cloud（ARC）网络，利用Aerial SDK在图形处理单元（GPU）上加速物理层处理，并通过小型小区论坛功能应用平台接口（FAPI）与OpenAirInterface（OAI）开源项目高层集成。我们讨论了软件集成、网络基础设施以及用于射频规划的数字孪生框架。随后，我们使用每个基站最多4部商用现成（COTS）智能手机，通过iPerf和视频流应用评估性能，测得下行链路蜂窝速率超过500 Mbps，上行链路超过45 Mbps。