Evaluation of Open-Source Mobile Network Software Stacks: A Guide to Low-cost Deployment of 5G Testbeds

Wireless mobile networks are evolving towards supporting ubiquitous data exchange between interconnected systems and humans. Such interconnections will accelerate digital transformation in service sectors, e.g., healthcare, education, transport, and industrial automation. However, each service sector demands a diverse set of network performance requirements that must be met to achieve the optimal quality of service. Hence, network testbeds are necessary to evaluate the performance of target applications before their field implementations. Traditionally, network deployments relied on proprietary and vendor-specific hardware and software. As a result, network deployment was expensive and rigid. This paper presents a guide to configuring, deploying, operating, and evaluating open-source-based 4G and 5G mobile network testbeds. This design overcomes proprietary restrictions and achieves fast, cheaper, flexible, and permissionless private network deployment. Quality of service parameters, such as latency, throughput, and received signal strength, were evaluated against the theoretical specifications for 4G and 5G. Furthermore, comparative evaluations were done between the performance of the network testbeds and a commercial network, i.e., MTN South Africa. Evaluation results show that it is easy and cheaper to configure and operate open-source-based 4G and 5G network testbeds that meet the theoretical specifications and enable performance evaluation for test applications before their real-world implementation.