Testing
Technologies developed by the TUDOR team will be tested and evaluated through a rich variety of experimental facilities provided by the project consortium.
Providing tailored tools and environments
In order to cater for the testing of TUDOR solutions with different targeted technology readiness levels (TRLs), tailored testing tools and platforms are made available for such purposes.
Both powerful emulation tools and real-life devices/infrastructures on the user equipment (UE), radio access networks, non-terrestrial network (NTN) components and the core network can be flexibly integrated for a wide variety of performance evaluations.
Core networks
The 3GPP-compliant 5G core network platform independently developed at the 6G Innovation Centre, University of Surrey, plays a key role in supporting technology testing in real-life network environments, and it can also be flexibly integrated with the aforementioned emulation tools to form hybrid testing environments. The software-based 5G core network functions are also containerised and cloudified through their host at the AWS cloud, thus realising its cloud-native feature.
A network operation centre (NOC) is also developed which encompasses key network management components for different purposes such as network monitoring/telemetry, network control and configuration operations.
Non-terrestrial network (NTN) components
The project team adopts a wide range of testing tools and platforms for validation and evaluation of the developed TUDOR solutions in 3D network environments.
On one hand, professional NTN emulation platforms are interconnected to the core network platform, facilitating an end-to-end testing environment that contains heterogeneous NTN nodes such as GEO/MEO/LEO satellites and UAVs.
Meanwhile, the core network is also connected with a constellating LEO satellite from Eutelsat OneWeb, allowing real-life experiments and performance measurements in the open 3D network environments.
External interconnections
The TUDOR testing infrastructure is externally connected to a wide variety of national and international research infrastructures, including UK’s national dark fibre facility (NDFF) and Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ESCAT, 5G/6G Hub) founded by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Cross-continent interconnections are also established with national network research infrastructures in India and Singapore, facilitating the testing of TUDOR solutions at the entire Internet scale.