Abstract
The most recent evolutionary steps in the development of mobile communication network architectures have introduced the concepts of virtualisation and slicing also into the Radio Access Network (RAN) part of the overall infrastructure. This trend has made RANs more flexible than ever before, facilitating resource sharing concepts which go far beyond the traditional infrastructure and RAN sharing schemes between commercial Mobile Network Operators (MNO). This paper introduces the EuWireless concept for a pan-European mobile network operator for research and presents its vision for RAN slicing and network resource sharing between the infrastructures of the EuWireless operator, commercial MNOs and research organisations around Europe. The EuWireless approach is to offer virtual large-scale testbeds, i.e., EuWireless experimentation slices, to European mobile network researchers by combining the experimental technologies from the local small-scale research testbeds with the commercial MNO resources such as licensed spectrum. The combined resources are configured and managed through the distributed EuWireless architecture based on inter-connected local installations, so-called Points of Presences (PoP).
This work is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement No. 777517 (EuWireless project).
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Pinola, J., Harjula, I., Flizikowski, A., Safianowska, M., Ahmad, A., Mhatre, S.S. (2020). EuWireless RAN Architecture and Slicing Framework for Virtual Testbeds. In: Gao, H., Li, K., Yang, X., Yin, Y. (eds) Testbeds and Research Infrastructures for the Development of Networks and Communications. TridentCom 2019. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 309. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43215-7_10
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