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MIT Technology Review Article
Rutgers Press Release on ORBIT
References:
D. Raychaudhuri, I. Seskar, M. Ott, S. Ganu, K.
Ramachandran, H. Kremo, R. Siracusa, H. Liu and M. Singh, "Overview of
the ORBIT Radio Grid Testbed for Evaluation of Next-Generation Wireless
Network Protocols," WCNC'05, March 2005. [PDF]
S. Ganu, H. Kremo, R. Howard and I. Seskar, "Addressing Repeatability in Wireless Experiments using ORBIT
Testbed," IEEE Tridentcom 2005 [PDF]
M. Singh, M. Ott and I. Seskar, P. Kamat, "ORBIT Measurements Framework and Library (OML): Motivations, Design,
Implementation, and Features," IEEE Tridentcom 2005 [PDF]
M. Ott, I. Seskar, R. Siracusa and M. Singh, "ORBIT Testbed Software Architecture: Supporting Experiments as a
Service," IEEE Tridentcom 2005 [PDF]
J. Lei, R. Yates, L. Greenstein and H. Liu, "Wireless Link SNR Mapping Onto an Indoor Testbed," IEEE Tridentcom
2005 [PDF]
Complete List of Recent Experimental Papers
or visit the
ORBIT Website
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Project
Objectives:
The ORBIT project was started in September 2003 under the NSF Network Research Testbeds (NRT) program (CNS-0335244), with the objective of developing a large-scale open-access wireless networking testbed for use by the research community working on next-generation protocols, middleware and applications. The project is currently continuing under CNS grant # 0725053, which supports operations and several key technical upgrades including the introduction of software-defined radio capabilities. The ORBIT project is closely aligned with the GENI (global environment for network innovation) experimental network deployment and serves as a proof-of-concept experimental platform for wireless aspects of the program.
Technology
Rationale:
Multiuser experimental facilities for wireless networking are motivated by the fact that this is a field with many new architecture and protocol ideas, and yet individual researchers have so far been restricted to small scale tests which cannot readily be reproduced by other groups due to variations in equipment and radio environment. The availability of a shared wireless testbed enables experimenters to work with significantly larger scale networks and report reproducible results which encourage subsequent validation and follow-on research by their peers. In the longer term, campus-wide network testbeds like ORBIT can also be used to for trial deployment of new mobile/wireless services and software.
Technical Approach:
The ORBIT testbed is centered around the “radio grid emulator” which provides facilities for reproducible networking experiments with large numbers (~100’s) of wireless nodes. The testbed also includes an outdoor “field trial system” intended to support real-world evaluation for protocols validated on the emulator, and for application development involving mobile end-users. Construction of the 5000 sq-ft, 400-node ORBIT radio grid facilty at the WINLAB Tech Center II building in North Brunswick, NJ was completed in mid-2005, leading to the first community release of testbed services in Oct 2005. Some examples of specific research projects carried out on ORBIT are mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) for tactical applications, mesh network protocols used for municipal WiFi access, DTN (delay tolerant networks), media streaming over wireless networks, mobile content delivery and wireless network security [link to published experimental papers]. The testbed has also been used for future Internet architecture experiments involving new protocols for both wired and wireless network subsystems.
As of 2008-09, the ORBIT project is focused on key technology and service software improvements necessary to evolve the radio grid testbed’s features to meet emerging research community needs. Ongoing work items within the scope of this effort include:
• Upgrades to radio grid features, specifically addition of software-defined radio (SDR) nodes, improved topology and mobility control, and integration with wired network testbeds.
• An enhanced ORBIT user portal, along with software and operations support services.
• Integration of ORBIT into the emerging GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovation) research infrastructure now under development by the CISE network research community
• An “ORBIT kit” for small-scale deployments at user sites, and an open-source software repository.
Results to
Date and Future Work Plan:
ORBIT
Radio Node released in 3rd Quarter 2005
Since its release in Oct 2005, the ORBIT radio grid testbed has been made available on a 24/7 basis to an increasingly large number of research users worldwide. The total number of registered users is currently about 250, with a total of over ~12,000 experiments completed on the radio grid facility as of 4Q08. The service interface on the www.orbit-lab.org website has been upgraded over the past year to support a number of new features including access to several sandbox units, GNU radios, noise generators for topology control and improved experiment scheduling.
More recently, ~10 GNU/URSP software radios have been incorporated into the radio grid, and several reproducible cognitive radio networking experiments have been carried out using this setup. Hardware and software development work for a higher performance URSP2 radio is currently in progress, and an upgrade of the grid with ~16 URSP2 radios is expected to be completed by mid-2009. The ORBIT management framework (OMF) software has been enhanced to support grid virtualization and integrated experiments with PlanetLab/VINI, as required for a large class of future Internet experiments resulting from the NSF FIND and GENI future Internet research initiatives. Also, OMF was recently selected as one of the competing experimental network control architectures for the GENI Spiral 1 prototyping project [link to OMF/GENI project from Marco] initiated by NSF (and managed by BBN) in Sept 2009. The related GENI/OMF project is expected to lead to broader release of ORBIT testbed resources integrated with wired network components through the GENI experiment management framework. Finally, the design of an ORBIT kit has been completed and an open-source software consortium has been established to enable other institutions to set up smaller ORBIT grids and to facilitate community software development. Several international research collaborations on wireless aspects of future Internet testbeds (for example, one with the EC 4WARD project [link to 4WARD website], and another with NICTA, Australia) are currently in progress.
For further information, please visit the ORBIT website.
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Contact:
Ivan Seskar
732-932-6857 Ext. 640
seskar(AT)winlab(DOT)rutgers(DOT)edu
Professor D. Raychaudhuri
732-932-6857 Ext. 638
ray(AT)winlab(DOT)rutgers(DOT)edu
Faculty/Staff:
Prof. M. Gruteser
Prof W. Trappe
Joe
Miklojcik
Students:
Mesut Ali Ergin
Haris Kremo
Kishore
Ramachandran
Zhibin Wu
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