Arena: A 64-antenna SDR-based Ceiling Grid Testbed for Sub-6 GHz Radio Spectrum Research

Arena is an open-access 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 clean 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. This article introduces for the first time architecture, capabilities, and system design choices of Arena, and provide details of the software and hardware implementation of the different testbed components. Finally, we showcase some of the capabilities of Arena in providing a testing ground for key wireless technologies, including synchronized MIMO transmission schemes, multi-hop ad hoc networking, multi-cell LTE networks, and spectrum sensing for cognitive radio.