What's TurboRAN?

TurboRAN is a state of the art testbed for enabling unprecedented experimental research on multi-band, multi-tier artificial intelligence enabled wireless networks of future.
It is a purpose built platform to enable cutting edge research on radio access network (RAN) as well as core network for 5G and beyond. TurboRAN consists of an end-to-end programmable, fully-functional cellular network that covers whole University of Oklahoma Tulsa campus. The testbed has three tiers of RAN with Tier 1 consisting of 4 micro cells, each covering a portion of the campus outdoor area. These cells can operate at frequencies ranging from 1.2 GHz to 6GHz. Tier 2 have 16 small cells, divided into two categories—one with frontend programmable to 1.2 GHz to 6 GHz and another with mmWave frontend (58-64GHz). Tier 2 also has four programmable Wi-Fi nodes to test WiFi/cellular co-existence in ISM bands. Tier 3 includes 10 mobile and static Nano cells in a dedicated 7500 ft2 lab equipped with a central baseband processing unit. Cell radii in all three tiers are adjustable through adaptation of the transmit power and antenna tilts. Mobility in the indoor lab is achievable using autonomous aerial and ground vehicles. TurboRAN also includes two separate packet core (EPC) flavors — commercial and open source. A unique feature of TurboRAN is a big data processing Hadoop cluster integrated to EPCs and the access points for implementing machine-learning algorithms to enable unprecedented experimental research on BSON and similar artificial intelligence and big data enabled technologies.

Search