Getting Started#

Aerial RAN CoLab Over-the-Air is a full-featured platform targeted for next generation wireless evolution, easing developer onboarding and algorithm development in real time networks. ARC-OTA equips developers, researchers, operators, and network equipment providers with all requisite components necessary to deploy a campus network for research. Here is a ten minute video introducing ARC-OTA.

Aerial RAN CoLab Over-the-Air is a developer launchpad that can be used to shape 6G research. It provides a radio network as the innovation sandbox. It is a C-programmable full stack that can help fast-track experimentation and help validate and benchmark results. The ARC-OTA platform enables algorithm design for promising baseband technologies in the 6G ecosystem, including terahertz (THz) band communications, very-large-scale antenna arrays, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, digital beamforming, spectrum sharing, and the Internet of Things. The workloads associated with all the above items are intrinsically GPU-friendly.

ARC-OTA offers an invaluable platform for next generation wireless communications, and we look forward to collaboration and contributions from developers to extend our blueprints and recipes to help us shape and evolve the platform.

ARC-OTA 1.5 Software Release Manifest#

Component

Version

Aerial CUDA-Accelerated RAN

Layer 1

24-1

Data Lakes

24-1

pyAerial

24-1

OAI [1]

gNB

2024.w21

CN [2]

2024.w21

Sterling Skywave Service Management

v0.5

OpenRANGym

(OSC RIC Release E)

v1.0

NVIDIA SDK Manager

v2.1

Foxconn O-RU n78 and CBRS

v3.1.15q.551v0706-oam

ARC-OTA Developer Content Map#

Product Brief

Provides information about the current release capabilities of the ARC-OTA.

Installation Guide

Describes the hardware bill of materials (BOM), network component configuration, and software required to install ARC-OTA.

Tutorials

Includes video walkthroughs to ease developer on-boarding.

On-Boarding Help

Includes references to reading material, GPU onboarding, and a teaching course for CUDA-C.

Developer Use Cases

Provides information about projects onboarded on the platform.

Release Notes

Outlines the software APIs and functionality as well as any limitations of the current release.

Developer Extensions and Plugins

Provides information about extensions developed for ARC-OTA, as well as plugin interop performed by developers.

Licensing

Provides licensing information regarding ARC-OTA.

Publications

Lists noteworthy publications associated with ARC-OTA.

Support

Provides help with the ARC-OTA.

Background

Describes related technologies.

Glossary#

Term or Abbreviation

Description

ARC-OTA

Aerial RAN CoLab – Over The Air

BBU

Baseband Unit

BF3

BlueField-3

BFP

Block Floating Point

CI/CD/CT

Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Testing

CN

Core network, which provides coordination between different parts of the access network and also provides connectivity to the internet. For additional information, refer to this page

cuBB

GPU accelerated 5G signal processing pipeline, including cuPHY for Layer 1 PHY and cuMAC for L2 scheduler

CU

Centralized Unit

CUDA

Compute Unified Device Architecture

cuPHY

CUDA implementation of 5G PHY layer signal processing functions

Layer 1 from CUDA Accelerated RAN

CUDA GPU software libraries/tools that accelerate Physical Layer, 5G RAN compute-intensive processing

DL

Downlink

DU

Distributed Unit

FDD

Frequency Division Duplex

FAPI

API for hardware components implementing 3GPP physical layer functions and “software stacks” implementing higher layers.

gNB

Next Generation Node B, a component of the 5G mobile communication standard

GPU

Graphical Processing Unit

HW

Hardware

K8s

Kubernetes

MAC

Medium Access Control

MU-MIMO

Multi-User Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output

mMIMO

Massive MIMO

NGC

NVIDIA GPU Cloud

NGAP

NG Application Protocol

NVIPC

NVIDIA inter-process communication standard

OAI

Open Air Alliance

OAM

Operations, Administration and Maintenance

O-RU

Open RAN Radio Unit

PHY

Physical Layer

RAN

Radio Access Network

RF

Radio Frequency

RIC

RAN Intelligent Controller

RLC

Radio Link Control

RRU

Radio Resource Unit

SDK

Software Development Kit

SMC-GH

Supermicro Server gNB with GH200 GPU

SNR

Signal-to-Noise Ratio

SR-IOV

Single Root Input/Output Virtualization

SW

Software

TDD

Time Division Duplex

TTI

Transmission Time Interval

UE

User equipment

UL

Uplink