An E2E simulator for 5G NR networks

Abstract

As the specification of the new 5G NR standard proceeds inside 3GPP, the availability of a versatile, full-stack, End-to-End (E2E), and open source simulator becomes a necessity to extract insights from the recently approved 3GPP specifications. This paper presents an extension to ns-3, a well-known discrete-event network simulator, to support the NR Radio Access Network. The present work describes the design and implementation choices at the MAC and PHY layers, and it discusses a technical solution for managing different bandwidth parts.Finally, we present calibration results, according to 3GPP procedures, and we show how to get E2E performance indicators in a realistic deployment scenario, with special emphasis on the E2E latency.

Simu5G–An OMNeT++ Library for End-to-End Performance Evaluation of 5G Networks

“…This paper presented Simu5G, a new model library for 5G NR for the OMNeT++ simulation framework. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of two libraries allowing end-to-end application-level communications in complex, heterogeneous scenario (the other one being 5G-LENA [5]), but the only one modelling ENDC deployments, FDD access, D2D communications, MEC and C-V2X. We have described Simu5G's resource management and protocol layers, to allow prospective users to understand its modeling philosophy, aimed at research on 5G services and 5G resource management.…”

“…Among end-to-end simulators of 5G networks, we find 5G-LENA [5] and the 5G-air-simulator [6], both recently released. The 5G-LENA model library for the ns3 framework evolves from the LENA 4G library [7] and includes an upgraded, standard-compliant version of the ns3 mm-wave module [8].…”

“…Simu5G includes a collection of models with well-defined interfaces, which can be instantiated and connected to build arbitrarily complex simulation scenarios, and is fully compatible with the INET library [15], which allows one to simulate end-to-end scenarios involving arbitrarily complex TCP/IP networks including 5G NR layer-2 interfaces. In the only other end-to-end 5G simulators that we know of are 5G-LENA [5] and the 5G-air-simulator [6]. However, both lack several functionalities included in Simu5G, e.g., 5G-LENA lacks FDD, and both lack network-controlled D2D communications and do not model dual-connectivity scenarios.…”

NR-U and IEEE 802.11 Technologies Coexistence in Unlicensed mmWave Spectrum: Models and Evaluation

“…In this regard, the popular and open source ns-3 simulator provides the perfect framework for reproducible research and collaborative development, as it was already demonstrated in [28], and disposes of multi-RAT models. Notably, the ns-3 simulator has recently released novel models for NR Release-15 [30], [31] and IEEE 802.11ad [32], [33].…”

“…The objective of the present work is extremely timely and relevant since 3GPP has not started yet the related Work Item, which is scheduled for Release-17 [19], [20]. To develop NR-U, we have extended the NR Release-15 model in [30] by incorporating new functionalities to allow operation in unlicensed bands, while fulfilling its regulatory requirements, in terms of LBT, maximum Channel Occupancy Time (COT), minimum Occupied Channel Bandwidth (OCB), and maximum power limits. The code is freely available from [34] under the GPLv2 license.…”