Arena is a wireless testing platform based on a grid of antennas mounted on the ceiling of a large office-space environment. Each antenna is connected to programmable software-defined radios enabling sub-6 GHz 5G-and-beyond spectrum research. With 12 computational servers, 24 software-defined radios synchronized at the symbol level, and a total of 64 antennas, Arena provides the computational power and the scale to foster new technology development in some of the most crowded spectrum bands. Arena is based on a three-tier design, where the servers and the software-defined radios are housed in a double rack in a dedicated room, while the antennas are hung off the ceiling of a 2240 square feet office space and cabled to the radios through 100 ft-long cables. This ensures a reconfigurable, scalable, and repeatable real-time experimental evaluation in a real wireless indoor environment.

If you use Arena for your research, please reference the following paper:

L. Bertizzolo, L. Bonati, E. Demirors, A. Al-shawabka, S. D’Oro, F. Restuccia, and T. Melodia, Tommaso, "Arena: A 64-antenna SDR-based Ceiling Grid Testing Platform for Sub-6 GHz 5G-and-Beyond Radio Spectrum Research," Computer Networks, vol. 181, pp. 1-17, November 2020. [pdf] [bibtex]

Visit the Arena webpage for more information about this platform.