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Testing & Integration

Certification and Badging

North American OTIC in Salt Lake City (POWDER)

General information:

Full name of OTIC: North American OTIC in Salt Lake City (POWDER)

Correspondence address:

Link to OTIC web site: https://powderwireless.net/oran

E-mail address: otic@powderwireless.net

The North American OTIC in Salt Lake City (POWDER) is associated with the POWDER mobile and wireless research and development facility. The facility provides remotely accessible and highly flexible lab-as-a-service functionality. The facility provides software and hardware “building blocks”, as well as bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and bring-your-own-software (BYOS) capabilities, which can be combined into a variety of experimental/test configurations. A sophisticated experimental workflow framework enables automated and on-demand testing and experimentation. The POWDER facility is in the process of procuring additional commercial O-RAN related testing software/equipment to realize this OTIC.

POWDER will start out by providing E2E badging and IOT Badging services. Beyond these OTIC-specific services, POWDER will provide on-demand, orchestrated and automated O-RAN related testing and development services, as well as general O-RAN lab-as-a-service capabilities.

O-RAN specific capabilities include:

  • Flexible/extensible automated testing orchestration and testing automation (TOTA) framework (workflow engine driving: lab configuration, device configuration management, test execution and test case management).
  • Testing automation and testing software (Keysight Technologies PathWave and Performance Benchmarking Solution (PBM)). (Procurement in process.)
  • Testing equipment (Keysight CoreSIM, RICTest, DuSIM, RuSIM, UeSIM). (Procurement in process.)
  • Automated, parameterized instantiation of O-RAN related software stacks, including ONAP Service Management & Orchestration (SMO), OSC and ONF near real-time RAN Intelligent Control (RIC).
  • RF lab with benchtop and portable equipment.
  • Complete (top-to-bottom: xApp to RU/CU/DU) open-source RAN slicing use case with OSC RIC and srsRAN (an open source LTE/5G stack).

Other relevant resources:

  • A four-square kilometre outdoor over-the-air (OTA) wireless environment with BYOD, software-defined-radios (SDRs), and COTS UE capabilities.
  • Near-edge compute, edge compute and metro-compute capabilities (~1,500 nodes). (Including Intel FlexRAN enabled compute infrastructure.)
  • Indoor OTA and controlled-RF environments.
  • Access to anechoic chamber.
  • Fully programmable massive-MIMO arrays in outdoor OTA configuration.

The facility and staff have demonstrable experience in developing demos and community events (including hosting tutorials, workshops, plugfests and proof-of-concepts). Further, the flexibility of the platform provides unique capabilities to enable lab and field trials.

Contacts:

Name: Kobus, Van der Merwe

Telephone number: +1-801-581-3012

E-mail: kobus@cs.utah.edu

Responsibilities/ duties: Lab director; Information about lab, testing, services

Host:
University of Utah

Supported work and scope of services:

POWDER provides E2E Badging and IOT Badging services.

We expect the specific services to evolve over time as O-RAN specifications and test equipment/software mature. Based on the current “Defined and Available Certificates and Badges” (O-RAN.TIFG.Cert-Badge.0), initial service offerings will focus on:

  • IOT badging: Open Fronthaul with DUT: O-DU/O-CU
  • E2E Badging: DUTs O-RU/O-DU/O-CU

We also have extensive experience with non-realtime and near-realtime RIC and expect that to be a focus area once the related specifications (test specifications and the certificate and badging process document) to enable certifications and badging are completed for the SMO/Non-RT RIC(rApps), Near-RT RIC(xApps).

Other service offerings will be added as certificates and badges are defined by the O-RAN ALLIANCE.

Beyond these OTIC specific services, POWDER will provide on-demand, orchestrated and automated O-RAN related testing and development services, as well as general O-RAN lab-as-a-service capabilities. Including:

  • Non-real-time/near-real-time RIC ecosystem testing/development
  • Use-case/proof-of-concept development and evaluation
  • Persistent/on-demand parameterized O-RAN software testing/development environments