The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) Project Office last week launched OpenAirX-Labs (OAX) as part of the PAWR program.
OAX is the North American home for development, testing, and integration of the OpenAirInterface (OAI) Software Alliance’s open source 5G standalone software stack. It is the newest resource in the PAWR program, a public-private partnership promoting wireless research through the development of multiple outdoor, large-scale wireless testbeds across the U.S. Founding industry partners for OAX include Facebook, Interdigital, NI, Qualcomm, Radisys, and Xilinx – all part of the larger PAWR Industry Consortium.
OAX is located at the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things at Northeastern University in Boston. The need for open source 5G software is increasingly apparent as researchers seek to advance development in the 5G mobile core, RAN, and service management and orchestration systems. As networks evolve toward more disaggregated and virtualized environments, there are significant opportunities to optimize and innovate on network operations. However, those opportunities have largely been limited to organizations with access to commercial software, making it difficult to broaden the 5G innovation ecosystem. OAX aims to address this market challenge by introducing a benchmark, end-to-end 5G implementation, and by providing development and test status across multiple identified metrics.
In addition, OAX will maintain a crowd sourced inventory of different ecosystem solutions to encourage increased collaboration and critical interoperability testing. OAX joins the PAWR program as part of a collection of Facilities and Resources that sit alongside wireless testbeds in Salt Lake City, Utah, the West Harlem neighborhood in New York City, and the Research Triangle area of North Carolina.
PAWR Technical Program Director Abhimanyu (Manu) Gosain
The launch of OAX puts muscle not only behind U.S. efforts to expand the capabilities and performance of 5G networks, but also behind the technologies that will move the wireless industry beyond 5G. By hosting OAX as part of the PAWR program, we are also ensuring there is a clear path from software development through to testing and prototyping of new software, hardware, and wireless applications.
Raymond Knopp, President of the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance and Professor at EURECOM
A lot of thinking and hard work from the board as well as the engineering teams of EURECOM and the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA) has gone into laying the ground work for the launch of the OpenAirX-Labs.
