Testbed Components

PerformNetworks offers a unique combination of emulated commercial and research equipment providing many different experimentation scenarios covering most of the functionality of mobile networks. The available components currently available for experimentation are depicted in the following figure.

PerformNetworks Architecture

Software Defined Radio Commercial eNB Conformance Testing Equipment LTE Core Network FlexIMon Transport and Services Channel Emulator Wi-Fi AP Software Defined Radio TestelDroid ANDSF Client Commercial Devices Instrumentation Image Map

Conformance Testing Equipment

T2010 Conformance Testing Unit The T2010A test set is a conformance testing equipment in a single box. Our laboratory has units that were sold by AT4 Wireless and which are now part of the Keysight Technologies portfolio.  The test set is designed to provide conformance testing both at protocol and physical levels and has been extended by our group in order to provide end to end communications using (or not) a commercial implementation of a core network.
UXM_unit_transparent Keysight UXM  is a LTE-A conformance testing unit which has been provided by Keysight Technologies for the duration of the Triangle project. This unit features a very high performance, supporting functionality like carrier aggregation (4CC DL and 2CC DL) with data rates of up to 600Mbps. The unit will be extended over the course of the Triangle project to support the standard S1 interface, thereby enabling experiments involving commercial core networks.

Software Defined Radios

 ExpressMIMO2 ExpressMIMO2 is an SDR PCIe board designed by Eurecom with the collaboration of Prodesign Europe and Insight SIP. The board can execute the OpenAirInterface software to provide eNB and UE functionality. It has a maximum bandwidth of 28MHz with frequencies ranging from 250MHz up to 3.8GHz and its transceivers can be controlled individually enabling MIMO 4×4 or two bands of MIMO 2×2.
 Ettus USRP B210 USRP B210 is a well-known SDR platform designed by Ettus Research. The unit is a board with a USB3 port that provides continuous coverage from 70MHz to 6GHz with a maximum bandwidth of 56MHz. It counts on full support of the GNU Radio project and can be used as a platform for many different projects including OpenAirInterface, srsUE and OpenBTS.

LTE Base Stations

 Nokia Small Cell Nokia Small Cells, LTE Release 10/Wi-Fi small cells working on band 7. These small cells can provide excellent data rates and an excellent mean for testing COTS small cells solutions. Furthermore te stations can be upgraded to include many of the new functionalities supported by Nokia.
  Alcatel Lucent Pico Cell, a pico cell prototype that was donated to the testbed by Alcatel Lucent. The pico cell offers a highly complex configuration interface that enables a high level of service customization. It works on band 7 and supports dedicated bearer establishment among many other interesting features.
 pixie Athena Wireless (now part of Google Fiber) Pixie small cells compliant with Release 8 working on band 7 and with a maximum transmission power of 2W. The cells can be configured via a standard configuration interface (TR.069).

Core Network

lte_architecture_use_case The core network emulator of Polaris Networks consists of an implementation of the LTE basic core network elements (MME,S-GW,P-GW, HSS and PCRF) that provide highly customizable Release 8 functionality including features such as negative testing, protocol monitoring and advance KPIs. Some of the procedures currently supported are:

  • UE Attach Normal and Emergency Attach
  • UE Detach UE initiated and Network initiated
  • S1 Handover with and without MME and/or SGW relocation
  • Idle Mode Mobility
  • Paging MME
  • Paging PGW initiated bearer creation/deletion/modification
  • Multiple PDN connection and disconnection
  • Roaming
  • Data traffic using internal traffic generator
  • Connection to external application/media server
  • Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS)
 polaris_wlan_offloading_s14_dotted ANDSF and ePDG emulators which provide support for untrusted IPSec-based Wi-Fi offloading, including MAPCON (Multi-access PDN connectivity) and handovers from WLAN to 3GPP access and viceversa.

Instrumentation

energy_meaurement The Keysight N6705B is a DC Power Analyzer that provides highly accurate measurements of energy consumption. This device can act as a 2-quadrant DC voltage source capable of generating arbitrary waveforms and/or an oscilloscope with data capturing capabilities. It also features advanced source modes, including a battery emulator mode and a battery charger mode.
Romes4 by Rohde & Schwarz is a scanner and a multi-technology network problem analyzer, compatible with user equipments based on Samsung or Qualcomm chipsets. It provides coverage and interference measurements as well as capturing layer 3 messages of GSM, HSPA and LTE devices.

Qualipoc is a measuring tools which is executed in a Samsung Galaxy SIII phone in engineering mode. It provides multi-technology network measurements in real time and its storage can be post-processed offline using Romes4.

The Spirent Channel Emulator SR5500 emulates complex wideband channel characteristics such as time-varying, multi-path, delay spread, fading, and channel loss, offering a programmable SCPI interface.

User Equipment

Model Units Chipset LTE Band(FDD)
Samsung B3730 4 Samsung Band 7
LG Motion MetroPCS 2 Qualcomm MSM8960 Band 4
LG VL-600 2 Qualcomm MSM6800A Band 13
Huawei K5005 (Vodafone) 1 Qualcomm MDM9200 Bands 7 and 20
Samsung Galaxy Tab LTE 1 Band 17
Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE 4 Qualcomm APQ8064T Bands 1,3,5,7,8 and 20
HTC One 1 Qualcomm APQ8064T 800,1800/2600 MHz
Sierra Aircard 313U 2 Qualcomm 700/1700/2100 MHz
Samsung Galaxy S3 1 Qualcomm 800/1800/2600 MHz

Transport and Services

The testbed has several servers available for service installation and several features are currently being integration:

  • Software Defined Network transport for the EPC and service. Open vSwitch as well as OpenDayLight controller are being considered.
  • IMS servers. An OpenIMS instance has already been deployed in the testbed. OpenClearWater is currently being study.
  • Dash servers are under consideration.
  • Géant interconnection, a link to iMinds has already been established using dedicated L2 VLANs. The automation of these connections ,to enable dynamic testbed interconnection, is under development.