Section: New Software and Platforms

Platforms

Reproducible research laboratory (${\mathrm{R}}^2\mathrm{LAB}$)

Scientific evaluation of network protocols requires that experiment results must be reproducible before they can be considered as valid. This is particularly difficult to obtain in the wireless networking domain, where characteristics of wireless channels are known to be variable, unpredictable and hardly controllable. Indeed, anechoic chambers with RF absorbers preventing radio waves reflections and with Faraday cage blocking external interferences represent an ideal environment for experiments reproducibility. This year witnessed the realization of such experimental platform (called ${\mathrm{R}}^2\mathrm{LAB}$ or Reproducible Research Laboratory) at Inria Sophia-Antipolis, in the context of the FIT ‘Equipment of Excellence' project. The objectives of this platform are twofold : on the one hand, we need to achieve highly controllable wireless experiments (e.g. control plane for 5G), and to this end, the testbed features an anechoic chamber. On the other hand, we need to make it possible to deploy experiments that have demanding resource requirements, as this is typically the case with e.g. ICN-based research, or when involving simulation. For that reason, the platform features some powerful servers of its own; in addition, these experiments can be either hybrid-experiments (as NEPI will be deployed) or federated experiments through several testbeds such as PlanetLab. As the final objective is to provide an environment to easily run realistic and reproducible wireless experiments and simulations, it is important to be able to increase the testbed realism by injecting noise and interfering signals in a controllable way. Experimentation results done in ${\mathrm{R}}^2\mathrm{LAB}$ could also be used to augment the realism of propagation models in simulators, which are able to run large scale scenarios. We are currently deploying the wireless nodes. The next step will to extend the testbed to support software defined networking (SDN) and LTE experimentations and to install specific tools for operating the platform.