CCI xG Testbed: An O-RAN Based Platform for Future Wireless Network Experimentation

The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) xG Testbed is a research and experimentation platform that embraces the open-source ideology to enable real-world testing across indoor and outdoor scenarios for next generation (NextG) wireless communications systems. The testbed is an open-access virtualized cloud infrastructure that enables scalable access to Software Defined Radios (SDRs) through its state-of-the-art cloud computing capabilities that leverage software-defined networking and network function virtualization to present an easy-to-use interface to manage radio, compute, and vector processing resources on-demand. In this article, we describe the overall architecture of the CCI xG Testbed, the different sites connected to form a common open, remote-access platform. We also elaborate on how this testbed fits into the overall goals of building open and intelligent RAN as per the ideals of the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Alliance. We present two sample experiments to showcase how the testbed can connect fundamental research with experimentation and real-world testing. We also highlight the gaps the testbed can potentially fill as an enabler for wide-scale system-level research across the NextG Radio Access Network (RAN) stack.