General information:

Full name of OTIC: North American OTIC in the Boston Area (Northeastern University)

‍Correspondence address: Northeastern University – Burlington Campus Building 5 Room 250, 141 South Bedford St, Burlington, MA01803

Link to OTIC web site: https://wiot.northeastern.edu/otic/

E-mail address: open6g.otic@northeastern.edu

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The North American OTIC in the Boston area (Open6G OTIC) builds on testbeds and facilities hosted in the Open6G space of the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things (WIoT) at Northeastern University, member of the O-RAN Alliance since 2020. The Open6G OTIC is a one-stop shop for Open RAN innovation. It serves as a hub for the development and testing of next-generation wireless networks utilizing Open RAN technology and Artificial Intelligence, offering a comprehensive range of testing services that facilitates compliance, interoperability, performance, and functional testing for Open RAN products. These services are accessible on state-of-the-art facilities, including RAN and RIC emulators; private 5G RANs with programmable protocol stacks; and Colosseum – the Open RAN Digital Twin and the world's largest wireless network emulator. The Open6G OTIC supports: end-to-end full stack testing, leveraging both emulated and real-world environments;  Digital Twinning technology  for virtualized testing, accurately replicating real-world conditions;  network energy efficiency evaluation in Open RAN deployments; interoperability and conformance testing of disaggregated base stations and RICs across different RAN implementations; and massive MIMO radios testing, as a key enabler for improving the spectral efficiency of Open RAN.

The Open6G center is open to researchers in the wireless domain and is driving research and development in the Open RAN with several industry partners, national and international academic research labs, and government agencies. It combines:

• A complete suite of testing equipment, which allows the OTIC to evaluate the functionality of O-RAN devices and systems across all WGs. The following test-cases, but not only, can be performed:
  • FR1 RU Conformance (Conducted and Radiated) up to 64 TRX.
  • FR1/FR2 DU Conformance with 4 MIMO Layers.
  • WG4 and WG5 IOT Badging
  • End To End Badging (Conducted, Radiated Indoor, and Radiated Outdoor)
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  • Additionally, the following non-standard test sets can also be performed:
  • RAN Energy Efficiency
  • RIC Validation (xApps and rApps)

• A 48x49x20 ft anechoic chamber to test radio devices in an interference-free environment, and to perform 3GGP Conformance Testing.
• One of the four FCC Innovation Zone frameworks in the nation, which allows the lab to quickly obtain experimental licenses for over-the-air testing in the Northeastern University Innovation Campus in Burlington, MA, and in the main Boston, MA campus.
• A multi-site Private 5G RAN deployment with softwarized and commercial RAN products, a diverse set of O-RU, 5G UEs, core networks, RICs.
• A 150x200x60 ft outdoor UAV testing facility, to profile use cases related to drone mobility.
• Colosseum, the world’s largest wireless network emulator with hardware-in-the-loop, with 256 software-defined radios, 20+ racks of compute, programmable GPUs, FPGAs, and software components to orchestrate and manage a multi-tenant experimental environment. This high-fidelity emulation platform provides capabilities to create and test wireless networking scenarios in a risk-free environment. It incorporates complex ray-tracing based channel modeling to replicate the physical world with high accuracy, and it continuously integrates with the latest versions of the open wireless network protocols thanks to its CI/CD capabilities, making it the true Open RAN Digital Twinning platform. Today, Colosseum hosts more than 500 users (in 100+ teams) from research institutions across the globe, and has already been successfully used to demonstrate closed-loop control for O-RAN with the OpenRAN Gym framework, large-scale data collection for training of AI/ML, hosts multiple 5G protocol stacks for RAN and core, and test a mix of commercial radios and emulated devices.

‍Contacts:

‍Name: Tommaso Melodia
Telephone number: +1(617) 373-3354
E-mail: melodia@northeastern.edu
‍Responsibilities/ duties: Director of the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things

Name: Michele Polese
Telephone number: +1(857)218-8712
E-Mail: m.polese@northeastern.edu
‍Responsibilities/ duties: Research Assistant Professor

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Hosts:

Northeastern University/Open6G

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Supported work and scope of services:

The Open6G OTIC is a one-stop shop for Open RAN innovation. It serves as a hub for the development and testing of next-generation wireless networks utilizing Open RAN technology and Artificial Intelligence, offering a comprehensive range of testing services that facilitates compliance, interoperability, performance, and functional testing for Open RAN products. These services are accessible on state-of-the-art facilities, including RAN and RIC emulators; private 5G RANs with programmable protocol stacks; and Colosseum – the Open RAN Digital Twin and the world's largest wireless network emulator. The Open6G OTIC supports: end-to-end full stack testing, leveraging both emulated and real-world environments; Digital Twinning technology for virtualized testing, accurately replicating real-world conditions; network energy efficiency evaluation in Open RAN deployments; interoperability and conformance testing of disaggregated base stations and RICs across different RAN implementations; and massive MIMO radios testing, as a key enabler for improving the spectral efficiency of Open RAN.

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