New York City will be a wireless testbed, home to a research platform deployed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance wireless technologies beyond current capabilities.

Many major wireless carriers have already made plans to roll out 5G services to consumers later this year and next year. The platforms funded by the NSF, which also includes a location in Salt Lake City, UT, will provide a “living laboratory” for testing “innovative wireless networks, technology, and applications, which are key to achieving the vision of smart communities.” The testing will include research on current 4G, LTE, and upcoming 5G technologies for advancement.

In New York City, collaboration for the project will include researchers from Rutgers University, Columbia University, and New York University, and in partnership with City College of NY, University of Arizona, IBM, and Silicon Harlem. The NSF has named the New York platform the Cloud-enhanced Open Software-defined Mobile Wireless Testbed for City-Scale Deployment (COSMOS). According to NSF award data, the New York City platform has been awarded $12.5 million from the NSF for development and deployment.

The specific test area, 1 square mile in West Harlem, will focus on “ultra-high bandwidth and low-latency wireless communications” in a real-world, densely populated neighborhood. While New York City is slated to be the wireless testbed for the project, the project researchers will be able to access the network from anywhere in the country for real-time optimization when needed.

According to the COSMOS website, some of the experiments will include testing mm-wave radios, software-defined radios, edge cloud, and advanced optical networking.

The NSF wireless testbeds will “allow for experimentation on a scale that could not be achieved previously, enabling new services and applications to benefit the community.”

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by Sarah Pereau | 11 Apr 2018