5G-EMANE: Scalable Open-Source Real-Time 5G New Radio Network Emulator with EMANE

Abstract

In this paper, we present a detailed design, prototype, and performance of a new, high-fidelity, scalable, Fifth Generation (5G)-New Radio (NR) Network Emulator built on EMANE: 5G-EMANE (5G Extendable Mobile Ad-hoc Network Emulator). The associated software modules are based on the Open-Air-Interface (OAI) open-source models (openairinterface.org). Thanks to EMANE's PHY layer abstraction methodology, the resulting 5G-EMANE offers powerful customization capability that can capture a wide range of scenario diversity with respect to network size, channel models, terrain effects, MIMO antennas, and mobility patterns. The 5G-EMANE also offers a full-stack LTE emulator as part of 5G's non-standalone (NSA) operational scenarios and a full-stack 5G emulator as part of 5G's standalone (SA) mode. A PHY-less version of the 5G-EMANE without PHY abstraction modeling capability, called 5GEM or 5G Layer 2 (L2) Proxy, is offered as open-source software, allowing the 5G research community to evaluate and deploy a full 5G ecosystem using a cost-effective set of commodity PC hardware units for a wide range of scenarios with realistic user-level modeling assumptions but without the complexity of PHY abstraction. Both 5G-EMANE and 5GEM are built on the Small Cell Forum's nFAPI (network functional application platform interface) which enables real-time operation of the entire LTE and 5G stack without the actual over-the-air LTE/5G PHY implementation for multi-user scenarios. 5G-EMANE affords the military community to rapidly conduct research and experimentation while utilizing and integrating LTE/5G with other tactical communications and networking protocols available in EMANE. More importantly, it enables rapid development of new 5G features needed for military usage such as sidelink (SL) without costly and time-consuming over-the-air testbed prototypes.