General information:

Full name of OTIC: North American OTIC in Salt Lake City (POWDER)

‍Correspondence address:

Link to OTIC web site: https://powderwireless.net/oran

E-mail address: otic@powderwireless.net

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The North American OTIC in Salt Lake City (POWDER) is associated with the POWDER mobile and wireless research and development facility. The facility provides remotely accessible and highly flexible lab-as-a-service functionality. The facility provides software and hardware “building blocks”, as well as bring-your-own-device (BYOD) and bring-your-own-software (BYOS) capabilities, which can be combined into a variety of experimental/test configurations. A sophisticated experimental workflow framework enables automated and on-demand testing and experimentation. The POWDER facility is in the process of procuring additional commercial O-RAN related testing software/equipment to realize this OTIC.

POWDER will start out by providing E2E badging and IOT Badging services. Beyond these OTIC-specific services, POWDER will provide on-demand, orchestrated and automated O-RAN related testing and development services, as well as general O-RAN lab-as-a-service capabilities.

O-RAN specific capabilities include:

• Flexible/extensible automated testing orchestration and testing automation (TOTA) framework (workflow engine driving: lab configuration, device configuration management, test execution and test case management).
• Testing automation and testing software (Keysight Technologies PathWave and Performance Benchmarking Solution (PBM)). (Procurement in process.)
• Testing equipment (Keysight CoreSIM, RICTest, DuSIM, RuSIM, UeSIM). (Procurement in process.)
• Automated, parameterized instantiation of O-RAN related software stacks, including ONAP Service Management & Orchestration (SMO), OSC and ONF near real-time RAN Intelligent Control (RIC).
• RF lab with benchtop and portable equipment.
• Complete (top-to-bottom: xApp to RU/CU/DU) open-source RAN slicing use case with OSC RIC and srsRAN (an open source LTE/5G stack).

Other relevant resources:

• A four-square kilometre outdoor over-the-air (OTA) wireless environment with BYOD, software-defined-radios (SDRs), and COTS UE capabilities.
• Near-edge compute, edge compute and metro-compute capabilities (~1,500 nodes). (Including Intel FlexRAN enabled compute infrastructure.)
• Indoor OTA and controlled-RF environments.
• Access to anechoic chamber.
• Fully programmable massive-MIMO arrays in outdoor OTA configuration.

The facility and staff have demonstrable experience in developing demos and community events (including hosting tutorials, workshops, plugfests and proof-of-concepts). Further, the flexibility of the platform provides unique capabilities to enable lab and field trials.

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‍Contacts:

‍Name: Kobus, Van der Merwe

Telephone number: +1-801-581-3012

E-mail: kobus@cs.utah.edu

‍Responsibilities/ duties: Lab director; Information about lab, testing, services

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Host:
University of Utah

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Supported work and scope of services:

POWDER provides E2E Badging and IOT Badging services.

We expect the specific services to evolve over time as O-RAN specifications and test equipment/software mature. Based on the current “Defined and Available Certificates and Badges” (O-RAN.TIFG.Cert-Badge.0), initial service offerings will focus on:

• IOT badging: Open Fronthaul with DUT: O-DU/O-CU
• E2E Badging: DUTs O-RU/O-DU/O-CU

We also have extensive experience with non-realtime and near-realtime RIC and expect that to be a focus area once the related specifications (test specifications and the certificate and badging process document) to enable certifications and badging are completed for the SMO/Non-RT RIC(rApps), Near-RT RIC(xApps).

Other service offerings will be added as certificates and badges are defined by the O-RAN ALLIANCE.

Beyond these OTIC specific services, POWDER will provide on-demand, orchestrated and automated O-RAN related testing and development services, as well as general O-RAN lab-as-a-service capabilities. Including:

• Non-real-time/near-real-time RIC ecosystem testing/development
• Use-case/proof-of-concept development and evaluation
• Persistent/on-demand parameterized O-RAN software testing/development environments

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