Design of a 5G Experimental Platform Based on OpenAirInterface

Abstract

5G has been designed for providing the appropriate services for a large range of applications requiring high throughput, low latency, a support for the IoT, or for Industry 4.0 business, etc. One of its strong statements is the sofwarization of most of its functions for providing more flexibility, and a support that can easily evolve for providing new services. In that context, OpenSource implementations of 5G functions arise. One of this implementation is the 5G OpenAirInterface (OAI). This paper then describes how a 5G experimental platform taking advantage of the 5G OAI software suite was designed and deployed at LAAS-CNRS. The aim of the platform is to be as generic as possible for being able to experiment and evaluate all 5G new mechanisms and protocols issued from researchers. This paper then specifically addresses how the compatibility issues between 5G OAI and the equipments (USRP, servers, operating systems, etc.) were fixed. The paper also proposes a performance evaluation of the 5G OAI platform and analyzes its limits.