On July 30, ORAN Development Company (ODC) brought its AI-RAN platform to AERPAW’s Lake Wheeler outdoor testbed for an on-site demonstration focused on both wireless communications and sensing.
One of the main demonstrations showed how the same wireless system can be used to communicate and sense at the same time. A pole-mounted user equipment (UE) sent an uplink signal to a nearby cell tower, while the base station continued providing downlink communication to other UEs. When an AERPAW drone entered the coverage area, the system was able to detect it using sensing information from the wireless network.
The demonstration also put AERPAW’s outdoor infrastructure to the test. ODC ran its platform on different server configurations at Lake Wheeler and used several backhaul options, including fiber, cellular, and satellite. This gave the team an opportunity to explore how wireless systems can stay connected and adaptable in different deployment conditions.
Dr. George Kailiwai, ODC Federal Advisory Board Chair, highlighted AERPAW’s role in preparing the site and supporting the demonstration:
“Team AERPAW, led by Dr. Magreth Mushi, AERPAW Platform Director, was an outstanding partner in making our first demonstration a tremendous success.”
He also noted that the team met and exceeded all 37 Key Performance Indicators across nine challenging use cases.
For AERPAW, demonstrations like this are an important part of bringing new wireless technologies out of the lab and into realistic environments. With access to programmable wireless infrastructure, spectrum, drones, edge computing resources, and outdoor test areas, AERPAW gives industry and research teams a place to test how emerging technologies perform in the real world.
This demonstration is also the start of continued work between ODC and AERPAW. ODC plans to return to AERPAW in October to explore more advanced features across multiple sites.
AERPAW looks forward to continuing to support ODC and other partners as they test new ideas for AI-enabled networks, wireless sensing, and next-generation communications.
