Overview
Public Protection and Disaster Relief facility for Outdoor and iNdoor 5G Experiments (PPDR ONE) is an extension of the 5GINFIRE ecosystem with a 5G enabled telco-grade development, testing and verification facility for experimentation with 5G network architectures and services for Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR). With PPDR ONE, 5GINFIRE covers the public safety sector and incorporate capabilities to conduct laboratory and field 5G experiments designed for the needs of emergency response, disaster relief, and critical infrastructure protection.
Figure 1: PPDR ONE facility location at INTERNET INSTITUTE premises in Ljubljana with indoor and outdoor coverage (prediction on n28/B28 band).
Located at INTERNET INSTITUTE premises in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the facility incorporates indoor and outdoor experimentation sites as well as a compact portable node for field experiments, ready to be shipped to any location in the EU. PPDR ONE represents an all-in-one experimentation facility that delivers all components of a virtualised 5G-enabled PPDR environment – SDR-based radio and core mobile system with flexible configuration options powered by NFV, cloud backend infrastructure, a set of reference PPDR services and apps, a PPDR IoT kit, industrial and ruggedized end user devices as well as a test and validation toolkit.
Architecture
PPDR ONE delivers a dedicated 5G enabled telco-grade development, testing and verification facility for experimentation with PPDR-specific 5G network architectures and services. The PPDR ONE facility is aligned with the 5GINFIRE reference model architecture and integrated into the experimentation ecosystem with the support for 5GINFIRE experimentation workflow.
The PPDR ONE facility act as a VIM and NFVI provider, connected through a secure VPN connection with the 5TONIC core site. MANO is connected to PPDR ONE VIM via the OpenStack APIs. The EPC/eNB provisioning is realized through predefined mobile profiles (e.g. different frequency band, bandwidth, QoS profiles etc.). Subject to feasibility, selection of mobile profiles will be integrated into the 5GINFIRE portal to enable remote on-demand 5G slice provisioning for the experiments. Compute monitoring (e.g. CPU/RAM) and network monitoring (e.g. RTT, DL/UL speed) is offered as a cloud-based service in Grafana/Kibana.
Equipment
The PPDR ONE facility offers:
- indoor experimentation site (Figure 5), covering laboratory-based testing in all operational frequencies from 70 MHz up to 6 GHz,
- outdoor experimentation site (Figure 1, Figure 5), supporting field operation in the 5G pioneering bands (3.4 GHz, 5G band n78, channel BW 100 MHz) and 4G band (3.4 GHz, B42, channel BW 100 MHz), and
- PPDR ONE node, a portable compact mobile system (Figure 6) ready to be shipped and deployed on the experimenter’s test site anywhere in the EU, covering indoor scenarios (bands from 70 MHz and up to 6.0 GHz) and field operation (based on the available frequencies at the experimenter’s location).
The PPDR ONE facility consists of:
- an SDR-based mobile system (Rel.14) providing 5G-enabled PPDR infrastructure (Figure 5, Figure 6),
- an OpenStack-based backend infrastructure incorporating NFV-ready orchestration to manage experimental instances using IaaS model (Figure 5, Figure 6),
- commercial and ruggedized user terminals and IoT devices to conduct the experiments (Figure 3),
- iMON Intervention Monitoring System (www.imon.si) designed for a public safety use, providing a set of PPDR ONE services and apps available for demonstration and evaluation purposes (Figure 4), and
- qMON Quality Monitoring System (www.qmon.eu), a telco-grade toolset for continuous network and service testing, verification and benchmarking (Figure 2).
[1] 700 Mhz band is one of the 5G pioneering bands and is also targeted band to be used for the future PPDR system deployments in EU. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/public-protection-and-disaster-relief
Figure 2: qMON toolset –in-depth analytics for network and service testing, verification and benchmarking with big data capabilities.
Experimentation
In the following is a non-exhaustive list of possible experiments supported with the PPDR ONE facility in two categories.
PPDR network provider related experiments – experimentation relevant to the PPDR network and infrastructure operators, PPDR organizations, system integrators, equipment and network services developers. Some examples of experimentation areas are:
- novel PPDR architectures and feasibility testing with aspects related to radio, mobile network and cloud infrastructure elements and components,
- dedicated PPDR base station deployments with flexible bands and channel configurations,
- radio experiments from functional and performance aspects (Carrier aggregation, NB-IOT),
- QoS enforcement mechanisms (QCI, ARP, GBR, MBR, AMBR, default/dedicated bearer) and performance verification in the context of PPDR services requirements,
- security architectures and deployment models with multi-level authentication (USIM, APN user based) and end-to-end encryption capabilities,
- PPDR network resilience and high availability architecture verification,
- deployment of PPDR IaaS environment in centralized and distributed model supporting 3GPP Isolated Operation for Public Safety (IOPS) and portable system modes,
- end-to-end performance testing of network architecture, IaaS nodes and network services.
PPDR end user and service provider related experiments – experimentation relevant to the PPDR service developers, IaaS orchestrators, PPDR organizations and end-users, cloud based and mobile based application developers. Some examples of experimentation areas are:
- deployment and testing of novel mission critical video and data services,
- deployment and testing PPDR mobile applications in real-world settings,
- verification of deployment models and architectural aspects of new PPDR services in IaaS,
- performance verification of deployed services (cloud and end-to-end perspectives),
- verification of new operational procedures enabled with a new generation of 5G technologies, in cooperation with PPDR end users.
When the PDPR One equipment resources will be successfully reserved, the experimenters will also be able to access them physically at INTERNET INSTITUTE premises in Ljubljana on reserved dates, or INTERNET INSTITUTE team could arrange personnel who will use the equipment on behalf of experimenters.
