Teaching on Testbeds

Exploring the 5G RAN

Fraida Fund

Runs on: Wireless, POWDER

In this experiment, you will explore the 5G RAN by bringing up an end-to-end 5G network on a single server. You will see:

  • how a 5G RAN can be split with the CU (centralized unit) handling SDAP, PDCP, and RRC layers, and the DU (distributed unit) handling RLC, MAC, PHY layers
  • how a CU and DU communicate over the F1 interface

Note that to run this experiment, you will need to have reserved access to compute resources in advance. Refer to the “reserve a server” instructions in order to complete this step several days before you plan to run the experiment.

We will run this experiment on the POWDER testbed.

Exploring the 5G RAN

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2231984.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.