PAWR Program Unveils ARA Testbed for Rural Wireless and Applications Research
- ARA aims to narrow the gap between rural and urban connectivity
- Ericsson contributes equipment and services for a commercial-grade 5G standalone network
- ARA offers opportunities for wireless research in a rural setting
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Wireless equipment at local ARA farm site. (Photo: Business Wire)
The
“ARA offers a publicly available wireless living lab supporting rural-focused research, education, and innovation,” said Dr. Hongwei Zhang, professor in the ISU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science, and Director of the ARA platform. “We are delighted to open ARA up to the research community and look forward to supporting work that will not only help narrow the gap between rural and urban connectivity, but also advance the frontiers of 5G and 6G communications.”
The ARA platform uniquely combines several types of technologies in both the backhaul and radio access portions of the network from Aviat (NASDAQ: AVNW), Skylark Wireless, NI (Nasdaq: NATI), and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC). For backhaul connectivity, ARA uses Aviat radios operating in the 11 Gigahertz and 80 Gigahertz bands. The testbed also maintains fiber connections as backup. In the radio access network, the ARA team has partnered with Skylark Wireless in developing and deploying production-grade, many-antenna MIMO systems with research APIs for communications using TV White Space (TVWS) spectrum, and it has deployed software defined radios from NI using mid-band connectivity.
ARA has also partnered with Ericsson, which generously contributed equipment and services to enable the deployment of a commercial-grade 5G standalone network on site. The commercial network includes an Ericsson 5G SA core and multiple massive MIMO 5G base stations in the mid-band and mmWave band operating with commercial user equipment across the platform. The Ericsson connectivity will support the development of precision agriculture applications, among other research initiatives, and is connecting farm sites that previously had little to no broadband access.
“The goal of the PAWR program is to offer opportunities for wireless research at scale across a mix of geographic and technologically diverse environments,” said Ellen Zegura, division director for NSF’s Division of Computer and Network Systems. “Located in the heart of
ARA has started to explore a wide range of academic and industry research opportunities, from weather impact studies, to experiments with connected farm machinery, to testing of new Open RAN components and systems. ARA was recently named an Open Testing and Integration Center (OTIC) by the O-RAN ALLIANCE. The ARA team will continue to release new capabilities and features for the testbed in the coming months and years and is actively seeking researchers who are interested in pursuing their own experimentation and development activities on the platform. Interested parties should contact e2@arawireless.org.
For more information on the PAWR program, visit https://advancedwireless.org/.
About the PAWR Project Office (PPO)
The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research Project Office (PPO) manages the
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230906528425/en/
Marissa Kunerth
marissa.kunerth@us-ignite.org
Source: PAWR Project Office (PPO)