Programmable and Open-Access Millimeter-Wave Radios in the PAWR COSMOS Testbed

Abstract

While millimeter-wave (mmWave) wireless has recently gained tremendous attention with the transition to 5G, developing a broadly accessible experimental infrastructure will allow the research community to make significant progress in this area. Hence, in this paper, we present the design and implementation of various programmable and open-access 28/60 GHz software-defined radios (SDRs), deployed in the PAWR COSMOS advanced wireless testbed. These programmable mmWave radios are based on the IBM 28 GHz 64-element dual-polarized phased array antenna module (PAAM) subsystem board and the Sivers IMA 60 GHz WiGig transceiver. These front ends are integrated with USRP SDRs or Xilinx RF-SoC boards, which provide baseband signal processing capabilities. Moreover, we present measurements of the TX/RX beamforming performance and example experiments (e.g., real-time channel sounding and RFNoC-based 802.11ad preamble detection), using the mmWave radios. Finally, we discuss ongoing enhancement and development efforts focusing on these radios.