Future Networks Testbed Requirements, Challenges and Opportunities

Testbed Workshop Banner 

Virtual || 7-8 February 2022

Event Recording - Day 1

Event Recording - Day 2

Event Presentations - Coming Soon

 

Overview 

Testbeds are a critical part of network generation evolution and complement the development of standards. Use cases are facilitated with a number of innovations starting from the Physical layer with mmWave, mMIMO and spanning other layers of the network protocol stack. Given the increased complexity of the next generation of communication systems and skyrocketing development costs, the importance of publicly available testbeds is quickly becoming critical for researchers and developers to get access to state-of-the-art infrastructure in order to prototype and validate their novel ideas. Lessons learnt from various experiments help to ratify the standards. Testbeds also help as a catalyst for deployment of advanced wireless systems. Hence, it is essential to have experimental testbeds, where functional and end-to-end testing can be performed. This workshop explores diversity requirements as well as the challenges and enabling techniques towards the development of scalable testbed facilities for future networks to provide a standardized approach and best practices for collaboration. The workshop will feature two keynote and fifteen invited talks that will introduce a range of testbeds from academia and industry and will cover a range of issues related to experimental evaluation of existing and future wireless systems

 

Proposed Program

NOTE: All times are given in EasternTime US (ET).

Day 1 - 7 February 2022
 08:50-09:00   Introduction - IEEE Future Networks Testbed Working Group   Ivan Seskar, Mohammad Patwary (Co-Chiars Testbed Working Group) 
 09:00-09:30    CONNECT testbed infrastructure: from open networking to digital twins   Marco Rufini (Trinity College Dublin)
 09:30-10:00    Cloud-based Remote Experimentation for Future Networks:
 Challenges and Lessons Learned
 Zhangyu Guan (University of Buffalo)
 10:00-10:30     CCI xG Tesbed: Introducing the Next Generation of Testbeds with O-RAN and srsRAN   Aloizio Pereira da Silva (Virginia Tech)
 10:30-11:00   IEEE 5G and Beyond Testbed: A New Collaborative Platform for Industry   Ashutosh Dutta (JHU/APL), Anwer Al-Dulaimi (EXFO)
 11:00-12:00  Keynote Presentation: O-RAN Overview: Standards, Software, and Test  Ian Wong (Viavi/O-RAN)
 12:00-12:30  Break
 12:30-13:00  Chameleon: Reproducible Experiments in the Edge to Cloud Continuum  Katarzyna Keahey (University of Chicago)
 13:00-13:30  POWDER Platform: Increasing Experiment Automation & Composability  Neal Patwari and David Johnson (University of Utah)
 13:30-14:00  Requirements and Challenges in Scalable Wireless Testbed Experimentation  Violet R. Syrotiuk (Arizona State University)

 

Day 2 - 8 February 2022
 09:00-09:30   Slices: European Scientific Large-Scale Infrastructure for 
 Computing/Communication Experimental Studies
 Serge Fdida (Sorbonne) 
 09:30-10:00    The impact of open-source testbeds on cellular security research   Roger Piqueras (Google) 
 10:00-11:00    Keynote Presentation: Academia, Industry, Non-profits, and Government: 
 It Takes a Continent to Invent a Network
 Eric Burger (Next G Alliance)
 11:00-11:30  AERPAW - Considerations for Designing Usage Models for a Computing-supported 
 CyberPhysical Research Platform
 Rudra Dutta (North Carolina State University) 
 11:30-12:00     COSMOS Testbed: Programmable Optical x-Haul Networking  Tingjun Chen (Duke University)
 12:00-12:30  Long standing focus on Experimentation in Europe - From Federated
 Testbeds to Advanced Vertical Pilots
 Jorge Pereira (EU Commission)
 12:30-13:00   ARA Wireless Living Lab for Smart and Connected Rural Communities   Hongwei Zhang (Iowa State University)
 13:00-13:30  Bristol 5G/6G Testbed and Trials  Dimitra Simeonidou (University of Bristol)
 13:30-14:00  Mu-Net: Community-shared infrastructure for mobile underwater acoustic networks   Aijun Song (University of Alabama)
 14:00-14:30  PAWR + Colosseum: Federating Physical and Virtual Wireless 
 Testbeds to accelerate 5G and Beyond Research 
 Abhimanyu Gosain (Northeasern University) 

 

 

Speaker Bios

Anwer Al-Dulaimi: Anwer Al-Dulaimi is currently a Senior Manager of Emering technologies & innovations and Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at EXFO Inc., Montreal, Canada. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Brunel University, London, U.K., in 2012 after receiving M.Sc. and B.Sc. honors degrees in communication engineering. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, sponsored by Blackberry’s advanced research team. He is the chair of the newly IEEE FNI 5G Testbed Project working to develop a virtual testing platform for E2E network innovation. His research interests include 5G and 6G networks, cloud computing, Blockchains and cybersecurity. Anwer is the editor of IEEE Future Networks Series on 5G & 6G and guest editor for many IEEE journals. He was the recipient of the 2013 Worldwide Universities Network best paper for outstanding research in cognitive communications, best IEEE/WWRF VTM best paper award for 3 times. He is the chair of the IEEE 1932.1 ‘Standard for Licensed/Unlicensed Spectrum Interoperability in Wireless Mobile Network’. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET), Associate Fellow of the British higher education Academy (AFHEA) and registered as a Chartered Engineer (CEng) by the British Engineering Council since 2010. He is a member of NSERC discovery grants committee, senior member of IEEE and a voting member of IEEE MobiNet Standards Committee.

Eric Burger: Dr. Eric Burger is Research Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University since 2011 and Technical Program Director of the Next G Alliance. He served as the Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and Assistant Director of the office of Science and Technology Policy in the White House, where amongst other accomplishments launched the Advanced Wireless Testing Platforms Team in the WSRD NITRD Work Group, highlighting the importance of making Federal facilities available to the private sector to advance the state of the art. Prior to Georgetown, Dr. Burger was CTO of a number of network equipment and communications companies. Early in his career he wrote and lead the development of device and systems design tools and simulators at Valid Logic Systems, known today as Cadence.

Tingjun Chen: Tingjun Chen received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 2020 and the B.Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2014. Between 2020–2021 he was a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale University. Since Fall 2021 he has been with Duke University where is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests are in the area of networking and communications with a specific focus on next-generation wireless, mobile, and optical networks as well as Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems. In particular, he is interested in emerging communication technologies and their interactions with the higher layers as well as in cross-layer optimization and performance evaluation of networked systems. Tingjun received the IBM Academic Award, the Google Research Scholar Award, the Columbia Engineering Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for Excellence, the Columbia University Eli Jury Award, the Facebook Fellowship, and the Wei Family Private Foundation (WFPF) Fellowship. He also received ACM CoNEXT 2016 Best Paper Award and the ACM MobiHoc 2019 Best Paper Award finalist, and his Ph.D. thesis received the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award Runner-up. He is also the Co-founder and Networks Lead of WiLO Networks Inc., a start-up focusing on low-power sensor hardware and end-to-end systems.

Ashutosh Dutta: Ashutosh Dutta is a computer scientist, engineer, academic, author, and an IEEE leader. He is currently a Senior Scientist, 5G Chief Strategist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, JHU/APL Sabbatical Fellow, Adjunct Faculty, and ECE Chair for EP at Johns Hopkins University. He is the Chair of IEEE Industry Connections O-RAN Initiative and Co-Chair for IEEE Future Networks Initiative. An IEEE Fellow, Dutta has co-authored over 150 articles, three book chapters, and had 31 patents awarded. As a computer science expert, he has been affiliated with Internet Real-Time Lab (IRT), and Distributed Computing & Communications (DCC) Laboratory of Columbia University, and works on wireless networking, LTE networks, Software Defined Networking (SDN), computer communication, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), 5G, Network Security, and mobility management.

Rudra Dutta: Rudra Dutta received a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, in 1991, a M.E. in Systems Science and Automation from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1993, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA, in 2001. From 1993 to 1997 he worked for IBM as a software developer and programmer in various networking related projects. He has been employed since 2001 as faculty in the department of Computer Science at the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, since Fall 2018, he is also serving as Associate Department Head on. His current research interests focus on design and performance optimization of large networking systems, Internet architecture, wireless networks, and network analytics. He is a senior member of IEEE and a distinguished member (distinguished engineer) of ACM. His work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the National Security Agency, and industry, most recently including a PAWR grant from NSF (the AERPAW project).

Serge Fdida: Serge Fdida is a Professor with Sorbonne Université since 1995. His research interests are related to the future internet as well as the design of federated testbeds to support experimentally driven research. He has been leading many research projects in Europe, notably pioneering the European activity on Internet test platforms. He is currently coordinating several EU projects in this domain including the ESFRI SLICES initiative. Serge Fdida has published numerous scientific papers, in addition to a few patents and one rfc. He was one of the founders of the ACM Conext conference, general chair of ACM Mobicom 2015 and IEEE Infocom 2019. Serge Fdida has also developed a strong experience related to innovation and industry transfer, - he was the co-founder of the Qosmos company, - one of the active contributors to the creation of the Cap Digital cluster in Paris, and the President of the EIT Health French community. He was Vice-President International Development of Sorbonne University. He is a Distinguished ACM Member and an IEEE Senior member

Abhimanyu Gosain: Abhimanyu (Manu) Gosain is a Technical Program Director for PAWR, Senior Director for Institute of Wireless Internet of Things at Northeastern University, Founding Director for OpenAirX-Labs and SETA for DoD OUSD Innovate Beyond5G Program (IB5G). He is in charge of setting strategic goals and the research agenda for a $100M public-private partnership for the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program and $25M DARPA Colosseum program. He serves as a Board Member for the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance, Founding member for Magma Core Foundation, University representative for O-RAN Alliance, Telecom Infra Project, NextG Alliance and co-chair on organizing committee and program committees for 6GSymposium, EuCNC,IEEE InfoCom and ACM WinTech. His numerous professional publications and experience exemplify use-inspired basic research in the field of networking technologies such as LTE, 5G, AI/ML, edge computing and Internet of Things. He is an IEEE Senior Member. He received his M.S. degree from Tufts University and M.B.A. from Boston University with High Honors.

Zhangyu Guan: Dr. Guan is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at The State University of New York at Buffalo. He received his Ph.D. in Communication and Information Systems from Shandong University in China in 2010. He was a visiting Ph.D. student with the Department of EE, SUNY Buffalo, from 2009 to 2010. He also worked there as a Postdoc from 2012 to 2014. After that, he worked as an Associate Research Scientist with the Department of ECE at Northeastern University in Boston, MA, from 2015 to 2018. Dr. Guan is the director of the Wireless Intelligent Networking and Security (WINGS) Lab at SUNY Buffalo, with research interests including programmable networks, spectrum coexistence, wireless multimedia networks, and wireless security.

David Johnson: David Johnson is a Research Associate and software engineer in the Flux Research Group in the School of Computing at the University of Utah. He joined the Flux Research Group as a staff member in 2006 and completed his M.S. degree in Computer Science in 2010. His research encompasses a broad range of systems software: mobile and wired networks, cloud computing, security, and operating systems.

Katarzyna Keahey: Kate Keahey is one of the pioneers of infrastructure cloud computing. She created the Nimbus project, recognized as the first open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service implementation, and continues to work on research aligning cloud computing concepts with the needs of scientific datacenters and applications. To facilitate such research for the community at large, Kate leads the Chameleon project, providing a deeply reconfigurable, large-scale, and open experimental platform for Computer Science research. To foster the recognition of contributions to science made by software projects, Kate co-founded and serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of the SoftwareX journal, a new format designed to publish software contributions. Kate is a Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago.

Neal Patwari:Neal Patwari is a Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He is jointly appointed in the Dept. of Electrical and Systems Engineering and the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering. He was at the University of Utah in Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2006 to 2018. He directs the Sensing and Processing Across Networks (SPAN) Lab, which performs research at the intersection of statistical signal processing and wireless networking, for improving wireless sensor networking and for RF sensing, in which the radio interface is the sensor. The SPAN Lab also investigates how algorithmic systems interact with societal systems to reinforce inequities. He has a BS and MS in EE from Virginia Tech and a Ph.D. in EE at the University of Michigan. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2008, the 2009 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Magazine Paper Award, and the 2011 University of Utah Early Career Teaching Award. Neal has served on technical program committees for IPSN, MobiCom, SECON, IPIN, and SenSys.

Jorge Pereira: Dr. Jorge Pereira, obtained the Engineering and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal in 1983 and 1987, respectively, and received the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering-Systems from the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, in 1993. Between 1983 and 1988, he taught in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of IST as Full Lecturer in the areas of Electrotechnics and Electrical Measurements, Applied Electronics and Telecommunication Systems, and became Assistant Professor in 1994. From 1988 to 1990, he worked at LinCom Corp., Los Angeles, in a NASA project on space-to-space communications, and on synchronization issues. From 1991 to 1993, he worked for Caltrans (California Department of Transportation) and PATH (Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology) on Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Systems (IVHS)/Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). From 1993 to 1996, at GTE Laboratories Inc., Waltham, MA, was responsible for Communication Analysis and Simulation in the Federal Highway Administration National IVHS Architecture study; represented GTE at the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) IVHS Section, and in the High Speed Data Systems workgroup of the CDMA Development Group (CDG). He has been with the European Commission since September 1996, initially as Scientific Officer, becoming Principal Scientific Officer in 2005. He has been dealing with ICT, covering a broad variety of areas, with a focus on networking, devices, applications and services, testing and validation, as well as deployment. He is, since 2016, in the area of Future Connectivity Systems, focusing on 5G and beyond, where he is responsible for the areas of Advanced Spectrum Management; optical-wireless convergence; Connected and Automated Mobility (CAM); and Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR). He is a member of the Advisory Board of John Wiley's Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Journal, and of the Editorial Board of Kluwer Academic Publishers' Wireless Personal Communications Journal. He is a Member of the IEEE, where he is Associate Editor for Mobile Radio, including Vehicular Communications, for the IEEE VTS Magazine, and a member of the IEEE Future Networks Summit Steering Committee of the IEEE Communications Society, responsible for CAM. He also served as Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer in Portugal. He received the Industry Achievement Award of the Software-Defined Radio (SDR) Forum in 2003, in recognition of his “outstanding contributions, research and development in the field of SDR”, and was inducted as life-member of the Wireless Innovation Forum. He was inducted in the IPv6 Hall of Fame, at the IPv6 Forum Summit in Nanjing, China, in October 2019.

Roger Piqueras: Roger Piqueras Jover is a Software Engineer in the Android Platform Security team, where he leads efforts in mobile and cellular security. He was previously a Senior Security Architect with the CTO Security Architecture Team at Bloomberg. Previous to Bloomberg, he was a member of the AT&T Security Research Center, leading cellular and mobile network security efforts. Roger received a Dipl.Ing. degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalunya, an MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California at Irvine, and a MSc+ABD (all but dissertation) in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University. More info: http://rogerpiquerasjover.net/

Marco Ruffini: Prof. Marco Ruffini received his M.Eng. in telecommunications engineering in 2002 from Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy. After working as a research scientist for Philips in Germany, he joined Trinity College Dublin in 2005, where he received his Ph.D. in 2007.
He is currently Associate Professor at TCD. He is Principal Investigator (PI) of both the CONNECT Telecommunications Research Centre at TCD, and the IPIC photonics integration centre headquartered at the national Tyndall institute. Prof. Ruffini is currently involved in several Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and H2020 projects, and leads the Optical Network Architecture group at Trinity College Dublin.
His main research is in the area of 5G optical networks, where he carries out pioneering work on the convergence of fixed-mobile and access-metro networks, and on the virtualisation of next generation networks, and has been invited to share his vision through several keynote and talks at major international conferences across the world.
He has authored over 150 international publications, over 10 patents and contributed is novel virtual Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (vDBA) concept to the BroadBand Forum standardisation body.

Aloizio Pereira da Silva: Dr. Aloizio Pereira da Silva serves as a CCI xG Testbed director at Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) and Research Faculty at Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at Virginia Tech. Da Silva’s areas of interest include wireless network, 5G and beyond. Mainly on software defined networks (SDN), software defined radio (SDR), network function virtualization (NFV), Internet of Things (IoT), Smart City, large-scale testbed experimentation, and mobile edge computing (MEC). He also has a background in deep-space communication intersecting with delay and disruption tolerant networks (DTNs). Da Silva is also Technical Project Manager for Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program at US-IGNITE/NSF PAWR PPO where he manages and oversees PAWR testbeds, including AERPAW, POWDER, COSMOS and ARA. Da Silva has large experience on European Horizon projects acquired during his role as 5G portfolio manager and research fellow at University of Bristol UK. Da Silva earned his bachelor of science degree in computer science from the Pontificia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, master of science (MSc) in computer science from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), master of business administration (MBA) in project management from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) and Babson Executive College, and doctorate (Ph.D) in computer engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA).

Dimitra Simeonidou: Dimitra Simeonidou is a Full Professor at the University of Bristol, the Co-Director of the Bristol Digital Futures Institute and the Director of Smart Internet Lab. Her research is focusing on the fields of high-performance networks, programmable networks, wireless-optical convergence, 5G/6G and smart city infrastructures. She is increasingly working with Social Sciences on topics of digital transformation for society and businesses. Dimitra has been the Technical Architect and the CTO of the smart city project Bristol Is Open. She is currently leading the Bristol City/Region 5G and Open RAN pilots.
She is the author and co-author of over 600 publications, numerous patents and several major contributions to standards. She has been co-founder of two spin-out companies, the latest being the University of Bristol VC funded spin-out Zeetta Networks, http://www.zeetta.com, delivering SDN solutions for enterprise and emergency networks. Dimitra is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), a Fellow of the IEEE (FIEEE) and a Royal Society Wolfson Scholar

Aijun Song: Aijun Song is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer engineering, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA. He received a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA, in 2005. From 2005 to 2008, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, University of Delaware. During this period, he was also an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Postdoctoral Fellow, supported by the Special Research Award in the ONR Ocean Acoustics program. He was a Research Professor with the University of Delaware from 2008 to 2015. His current research interests include digital communications and signal processing techniques for radio-frequency and underwater acoustic channels, ocean acoustics, sensor networks, and ocean monitoring and exploration.
Dr. Song served as the General Co-Chair of the 2018 March NSF Workshop on Underwater Wireless Communications and Networking and the 2018 November NSF Workshop on Underwater Wireless Infrastructure. He was the General Co-Chair of the 14th International Conference on Underwater Networks & Systems. He is a recent recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2021).

Violet Syrotiuk: Violet Syrotiuk is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Arizona State University. She is the Steering Committee Chair of the CNERT Workshop, an INFOCOM Workshop whose focus is research using testbeds now in its 9th year. Her own research interests are in scalable screening experiments, and layer-2 protocol development.

Ian Wong: Dr. Ian C. Wong has been in the wireless field for over 20 years and is presently the Director of RF and Wireless Architecture in the CTO office at VIAVI Solutions, where he is leading RF and wireless technology strategy, standards, and architectures. He is also the current co-chair of the Test and Integration Focus Group (TIFG) in the O-RAN Alliance. From 2009 – Aug 2020, he was with NI (formerly National Instruments) where he was Section Manager of Wireless Systems R&D where he led the development of real-time end-to-end 5G wireless test and prototyping systems, and managed the company’s 3GPP wireless standards and IP strategy. From 2007-2009, he was a systems research and standards engineer with Freescale Semiconductor where he represented Freescale in the 3GPP LTE standardization efforts. He is a senior member of the IEEE, was the Director of Industry Communities for IEEE Communications Society 2016-2019, and was the Industry Program Chair for IEEE Globecom 2014 in Austin. His current research interests include 5G wireless systems architecture, standards, and algorithms, with particular focus on advanced physical layer technologies like mmWave and Massive MIMO.
Dr. Wong co-authored the Springer book “Resource Allocation for Multiuser Multicarrier Wireless Systems,” numerous patents, standards contributions, and IEEE journal and conference publications. He was awarded the Texas Telecommunications Engineering Consortium Fellowship in 2003-2004, and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group student leadership award in 2007.
He received the MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004 and 2007, respectively, and a BS degree in electronics and communications engineering (magna cum laude) from the University of the Philippines in 2000.

Hongwei Zhang: Hongwei Zhang is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, USA. His research focuses on mission-critical wireless networks for real-time control, extended reality, and cyber-physical systems. He currently leads the ARA wireless living lab for smart and connected rural communities. He has also led/participated-in the development of connected vehicle open-innovation infrastructures, IoT network testbeds, and large-scale wireless sensor networks.
His work has been recognized by the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Best Paper Award from the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), and Best Demo Awards from the GENI Engineering Conferences.