Proceedings of the 2015 Workshop on ns-3

Research Article

ns-3-based real-time emulation of LTE testbed using LabVIEW platform for software defined networking (SDN) in CROWD project

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1145/2756509.2756516,
        author={Rohit  Gupta and Bjoern  Bachmann and Russell  Ford and Sundeep  Rangan and Nikhil  Kundargi and Amal  Ekbal and Karamvir  Rathi and Maria Isabel  Sanchez and Antonio  de la Oliva and Arianna  Morelli},
        title={ns-3-based real-time emulation of LTE testbed using LabVIEW platform for software defined networking (SDN) in CROWD project},
        proceedings={Proceedings of the 2015 Workshop on ns-3},
        publisher={ACM},
        proceedings_a={WNS3},
        year={2016},
        month={2},
        keywords={LabVIEW Simulation Hardware emulation Software-Defined Radio Software-Defined Networking LTE ns-3},
        doi={10.1145/2756509.2756516}
    }
    
  • Rohit Gupta
    Bjoern Bachmann
    Russell Ford
    Sundeep Rangan
    Nikhil Kundargi
    Amal Ekbal
    Karamvir Rathi
    Maria Isabel Sanchez
    Antonio de la Oliva
    Arianna Morelli
    Year: 2016
    ns-3-based real-time emulation of LTE testbed using LabVIEW platform for software defined networking (SDN) in CROWD project
    WNS3
    ACM
    DOI: 10.1145/2756509.2756516
Rohit Gupta1, Bjoern Bachmann1, Russell Ford2, Sundeep Rangan2, Nikhil Kundargi3, Amal Ekbal3, Karamvir Rathi3, Maria Isabel Sanchez4, Antonio de la Oliva4, Arianna Morelli5
  • 1: National Instruments, Dresden, Germany
  • 2: New York University
  • 3: National Instruments, Austin, TX
  • 4: University Carlos III, Madrid, Spain
  • 5: INTECS, Pisa, Italy

Abstract

In this paper, we present initial results on how the ns-3 LTE LENA stack is used to build a LTE testbed in an indoor lab network. We have extended the ns-3 MAC/PHY layer architecture to interface with a LabVIEW implementation of the LTE Physical layer and also extended ns-3 core modules to enable real-time performance. We present how this testbed can be used for prototyping a novel Software Defined Networking (SDN) scheme for interference management within dense heterogeneous deployments of cellular wireless networks. We provide an example case study for a Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) implementation using this testbed, where we demonstrate mobility of a emulated User Equipment device between LTE and WiFi networks. We plan to use this testbed for validation and demonstration of various SDN-based algorithms proposed within the framework of the EU FP7 CROWD (Connectivity management for eneRgy Optimised Wireless Dense networks) Project. We believe the proposed testbed is especially valuable for studying the cross-layer performance of cellular PHY/MAC algorithms in a realistic environment and shows how ns-3 can be used as a unified prototyping and simulation framework for wireless networks.