Driving Innovation in 6G Wireless Technologies: The OpenAirInterface Approach

The development of 6G wireless technologies is rapidly advancing, with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) entering the pre-standardization phase and aiming to deliver the first specifications by 2028. This paper explores the OpenAirInterface (OAI) project, an open-source initiative that plays a crucial role in the evolution of 5G and the future 6G networks. OAI provides a comprehensive implementation of 3GPP and O-RAN compliant networks, including Radio Access Network (RAN), Core Network (CN), and software-defined User Equipment (UE) components. The paper details the history and evolution of OAI, its licensing model, and the various projects under its umbrella, such as RAN, the CN, as well as the Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) projects. It also highlights the development methodology, Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) processes, and end-to-end systems powered by OAI. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potential of OAI for 6G research, focusing on spectrum, reflective intelligent surfaces, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) integration. The open-source approach of OAI is emphasized as essential for tackling the challenges of 6G, fostering community collaboration, and driving innovation in next-generation wireless technologies.

Round Trip Time Estimation Utilizing Cyclic Shift of Uplink Reference Signal

In the context of fifth-generation new radio (5G NR) technology, it is not possible to directly obtain an absolute uplink (UL) channel impulse response (CIR) at the base station (gNB) from a user equipment (UE). The UL CIR obtained through the sounding reference signal (SRS) is always time-shifted by the timing advance (TA) applied at the UE. The TA is crucial for maintaining UL synchronization, and transmitting SRS without applying the TA will result in interference. In this work, we propose a new method to obtain absolute UL CIR from a UE and then use it to estimate the round trip time (RTT) at the gNB. This method requires enhancing the current 5G protocol stack with a new Zadoff-Chu (ZC) based wideband uplink reference signal (URS). Capitalizing on the cyclic shift property of the URS sequence, we can obtain the RTT with a significant reduction in overhead and latency compared to existing schemes. The proposed method is experimentally validated using a real-world testbed based on OpenAirInterface (OAI).

Listen-While-Talking: Toward dApp-based Real-Time Spectrum Sharing in O-RAN

This demo paper presents a dApp-based real-time spectrum sharing scenario where a 5th generation (5G) base station implementing the NR stack adapts its transmission and reception strategies based on the incumbent priority users in the Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band. The dApp is responsible for obtaining relevant measurements from the Next Generation Node Base (gNB), running the spectrum sensing inference, and configuring the gNB with a control action upon detecting the primary incumbent user transmissions. This approach is built on dApps, which extend the O-RAN framework to the real-time and user plane domains. Thus, it avoids the need of dedicated Spectrum Access Systems (SASs) in the CBRS band. The demonstration setup is based on the open-source 5G OpenAirInterface (OAI) framework, where we have implemented a dApp interfaced with a gNB and communicating with a Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) User Equipment (UE) in an over-the-air wireless environment. When an incumbent user has active transmission, the dApp will detect and inform the primary user presence to the gNB. The dApps will also enforce a control policy that adapts the scheduling and transmission policy of the Radio Access Network (RAN). This demo provides valuable insights into the potential of using dApp-based spectrum sensing with O-RAN architecture in next generation cellular networks.

Global Scale Self-Supervised Channel Charting with Sensor Fusion

The sensing and positioning capabilities foreseen in 6G have great potential for technology advancements in various domains, such as future smart cities and industrial use cases. Channel charting has emerged as a promising technology in recent years for radio frequency-based sensing and localization. However, the accuracy of these techniques is yet far behind the numbers envisioned in 6G. To reduce this gap, in this paper, we propose a novel channel charting technique capitalizing on the time of arrival measurements from surrounding Transmission Reception Points (TRPs) along with their locations and leveraging sensor fusion in channel charting by incorporating laser scanner data during the training phase of our algorithm. The proposed algorithm remains self-supervised during training and test phases, requiring no geometrical models or user position ground truth. Simulation results validate the achievement of a sub-meter level localization accuracy using our algorithm 90% of the time, outperforming the state-of-the-art channel charting techniques and the traditional triangulation-based approaches.

Integrated Access and Backhaul in 5G with Aerial Distributed Unit using OpenAirInterface

In this work, we demonstrate the Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) capabilities of an aerial robot offering 5G connectivity to ground users. The robot is integrated with a distributed unit (DU) and has 5G wireless backhaul access to a terrestrial central unit (CU). The CU-DU interface fully complies with the 3GPP defined F1 application protocol (F1AP). Such aerial robots can be instantiated and configured dynamically tailoring to the network demands. The complete radio and access network solution is based on open-source software from OpenAirInterface, and off-the-shelf commercial 5G mobile terminals. Experimental results illustrate throughput gains, coverage extension and dynamic adaptability nature of the aerial DU.

Sensing aided Channel Estimation in Wideband Millimeter-Wave MIMO Systems

In this work, the uplink channel estimation problem is considered for a millimeter wave (mmWave) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system. It is well known that pilot overhead and computation complexity in estimating the channel increases with the number of antennas and the bandwidth. To overcome this, the proposed approach allows the channel estimation at the base station to be aided by the sensing information. The sensing information contains an estimate of scatterers locations in an environment. A simultaneous weighting orthogonal matching pursuit (SWOMP) - sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) algorithm is proposed that efficiently incorporates this sensing information in the communication channel estimation procedure. The proposed framework can cope with scenarios where a) scatterers present in the sensing information are not associated with the communication channel and b) imperfections in the scatterers' location. Simulation results show that the proposed sensing aided channel estimation algorithm can obtain good wideband performance only at the cost of fractional pilot overhead. Finally, the Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB) for the angle estimation and multipath channel gains in the SBL is derived, providing valuable insights into the local identifiability of the proposed algorithms.