Discover ARC-OTA

With the deployment of 5G systems in full swing, the research focus on 6G wireless communications systems has begun. Keeping up with the tradition of a new generation of cellular systems once every ten years, there is an expectation that 6G systems will be standardized and ready for deployment starting around 2030[https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/net2030/Documents/White_Paper.pdf]. Because it typically takes ten years for a NG (Next Generation) wireless technology to see commercial daylight, the time to begin research for 6G is now.

It is crucial to ensure availability of a comphrehensive programmable end-to-end (E2E) research and innovation platform to develop technologies for future communication systems. While it is possible that some of the requirements for NG wireless can be met by incorporating new advancements within the advanced 5G framework, it is already clear that meeting the goals of 6G will require some fundamental shifts in system architecture, waveform design, protocols, interference management, and channel modelling.

Besides enhanced mobile broadband for consumers with very high data rates of 1Tbps, 5G+ is widely expected to enable the Fifth Industrial Revolution through the digitalization and connectivity of all things (humans, machines, sensors). Digital twins of objects created in edge clouds will form the essential foundation of the future digital world. The realization of a comprehensive and true digital rendering of the physical world at every spatial and time instant will be required at extreme low latency. Sensors will accurately map every instant and integrate into the digital and virtual worlds, to enable new Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled capabilities. Augmented reality user interfaces will enable efficient and intuitive human control of all these worlds, whether physical, or virtual. Simply put, 6G is widely expected to be smarter, faster, and more efficient than 5G. Specifically, the following image outlines the key 6G trending KPIs:

The following major new use case themes are emerging that can optimally use the new communications framework:

• End devices extending from being single entities to a collection of multiple local entities acting in unison to create the new man-machine interface. [Reference 5G NR Rel 18 - Gateway UE function for Mission Critical Communication]

• Distributed compute among multiple local devices and the cloud [Reference 5G NR Rel 18 - Ad hoc Group Communication support in Mission Critical Services]

• Knowledge systems that store, process, and convert data into actionable knowledge through AI systems in network functions as well as operations. [Reference 5G NR Rel 18 - AI/ML model transfer in 5GS]

• Precision sensing and actuation to control the physical world [Reference 5G NR Rel 18 - Application layer support for Factories of the Future (FF)]

• Network digital twin [ Reference ITU-T Y.3090 Digital Twin Architecture and Requirements]

Aerial RAN CoLab (Over The Air)

Aerial RAN CoLab (Over The Air) (ARC-OTA for short) is an NVIDIA platform that you can use to shape 6G for usage scenarios and requirements on multi-terabit per second (Tb/s) cognitive 6G networks. It is a fully programmable network architecture that incorporates an intelligent plane to 6G wireless connectivity, AI and machine learning (ML) for autonomous networks, and innovative air-interface designs. 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 and as such NVIDIA will play a pivotal role in becoming the innovation platform for NG wireless communications.

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

Key Platform Value Differentiation

ARC-OTA provides the following values:

• Displace existing narrow band non real time systems to enable wideband real time platform

• Overcome the lack of a complete and full-featured platform targeted for NG wireless evolution

• C/C++ programmable from the physical layer through to the Core Node (CN)

• Eases onboarding and algorithm development in real time networks

• Accelerate AI adoption in wireless RAN workloads

• Pipeline for data collection, storage, parsing using 3GPP schema for wireless communication

• Provide developers with full featured platform capable of being used to generate data sets, train, and simulate and develop re-enforcement learning frameworks

• Longer term roadmap to provide digital twin wireless network simulation framework with service and network infrastructure analysis capabilities to develop, manage an intelligent radio system

ARC-OTA release 1.2 is a full-featured platform targeted for next generation-wireless evolution that eases onboarding and algorithm development in real time networks.

ARC-OTA equips developers, researchers, and network equipment providers with all requisite components necessary to deploy a campus network for research with the following capabilities:

• A 3GPP Release 15 compliant and O-RAN 7.2 split 5G SA 4T4R wireless stack with all network elements from Radio Access Network and 5G Core. Aerial SDK Layer 1 is integrated with OAI DU, CU, and CN.

• Blueprint to ease onboarding, staging, and integrating the E2E Advanced 5G network components. This blueprint topology is illustrated below and along with the comprehensive BOM, a step-by-step staging and setup recipe, tutorials, troubleshooting tips are provided to configure all the network components for a quick turnaround live network.

• Complete access to source code in C/C++ is available from Layer 1 through CN to jump start algorithm research.

The solution enables researchers to deploy Advanced 5G in an on-prem indoor lab network and includes the following components:

• NVIDIA Aerial SDK Layer 1 O-RAN DU uses GPU and DPU cards to offload and accelerate computation intensive fronthaul functions, supporting 100 Gbps of transfer rate. Using NVIDIA’s GPU and DPU to perform inline processing, RAN physical layer processing can be optimized by eliminating the back-and-forth transfer of latency sensitive data between the FPGAs, hardware accelerators and CPU cores, which significantly reduces power consumption and latency. This platform supports advanced 5G RAN system design with the integration of highly flexible general-purpose GPUs and NVIDIA DPUs. The GPU with high-level programming such as CUDA, offloads the complete Layer 1 baseband processing. The platform offers quick turnaround prototyping flexibility through use of high-level programming CUDA C/C++. The NVIDIA DPU card on the other hand, offloads the complete data transfer functions for fronthaul, including time sync using the precision time protocol (PTP).

• Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) compatible and interoperated radio from Foxconn Technology (O-RU) in a O-RAN compliant 7.2 split configuration.

• OAI’s O-RAN CU systems running on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) x86 server on the same physical server collocated with the DU. NVIDIA GPU frees up CPU resources, which could be used for CU and other network functions.

• OAI’s 5G SA 5GC (5G Core) functions with external protocol data unit (PDU) session point of interconnect to data network (DN).

• The complete list of 5G infrastructure components required to setup 5G OTA network are qualified with ARC-OTA are described in the Installation Guide hardware BOM.

The current release supports the following capabilities:

5GNR Configuration and Features

5G Fronthaul Configuration and Features