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.
| 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 | Provides information about extensions developed for ARC-OTA. |
| 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. |
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 | Radio Intelligent Controller |
| RLC | Radio Link Control |
| RRU | Radio Resource Unit |
| SDK | Software Development Kit |
| 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 |