Scenario-1: Fixed-to-Fixed 1 (F2F1)

This scenario is the most basic experimentation option for AERPAW. We expect to have more than 30 fixed nodes in AERPAW once it is fully operational. Most of these nodes are expected to be remotely and continuously accessible, other than during maintenance or repairs. Since there will not be a need for a drone pilot or another personnel overseeing the fixed nodes, the F2F1 experimentation scenario will be convenient means of testing advanced wireless concepts for fixed-access scenarios.

The example in the figure shows two towers deployed by AERPAW, both employing a PAW connected to a companion computer. Example experiments include communication between two or more SDRs, as well as SDRs and other equipment (e.g., RF sensors, 4G/5G base stations (BSs), LoRa gateway). As three different example sets of experiments, we provide BS setup, waveform testing, and channel sounding, and we provide several representative studies from the literature. Note that advanced wireless platforms such as POWDER Wireless readily support SDR experiments similar to these. While having close to continuous access to the platform (resources permitted) is a major convenience, introducing mobility to one or more of the PAW nodes will allow a wide range of additional experimental scenarios.

BS Setup: Setting up LTE testbed using open source LTE library

[1] V. Marojevic, R. Nealy, and J. H. Reed, “LTEspectrumsharingresearchtestbed: Integrated hardware, software, network, and data,” inProc.Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, ExperimentalEvaluation and Characterization, ser. WiNTECH ’17.New York, NY, USA: Association for ComputingMachinery, 2017, p. 43–50. [Online]. Available:https://doi.org/10.1145/3131473.3131484
[2] Gomez-Miguelez, A. Garcia-Saavedra, P. D. Sutton, P. Serrano, C. Cano, and D. J. Leith, “srsLTE: an open-source platform for LTE evolution and experimentation,” 2016.

Waveform Testing: Run experiments for different waveforms such as OFDM, FBMC, GFDM, etc.

[1] G. Fettweis, M. Krondorf, and S. Bittner, “GFDM generalized frequency division multiplexing,” inProc. IEEE Veh. Technol. Conf., 2009, pp. 1–4.
[2] X. Xiong, W. Xiang, K. Zheng, H. Shen, and X. Wei,“An open source SDR-based NOMA system for 5G net-works,”IEEE Wireless Commun., vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 24–32, 2015.
[3] A. Puschmann, P. Sutton, and I. Gomez, “ImplementingNB-IoT in Software – Experiences Using the srsLTELibrary,”arXiv e-prints, p. arXiv:1705.03529, May 2017.
[4] R. M. Rao, V. Marojevic, and J. H. Reed, “Rate-maximizing OFDM pilot patterns for UAV communications in nonstationary A2G channels,” inProc. IEEE Veh. Technol. Conf. (VTC), 2018, pp. 1–5.

Channel Sounding: Channel measurements among fixed points in different (urban, suburban, rural) environments

[1] B. De Beelde, E. Tanghe, M. Yusuf, D. Plets, E. DePoorter, and W. Joseph, “60 GHz path loss modeling inside ships,” in European Conf. on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP), 2020, pp. 1–5.
[2] D. Maas, M. H. Firooz, J. Zhang, N. Patwari, and S. K.Kasera, “Channel sounding for the masses: Low complexity GNU 802.11b channel impulse response estimation,” IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 11, no. 1, pp.1–8, 2011.
[3] W. Khawaja, O. Ozdemir, Y. Yapici, F. Erden, and I. Guvenc, “Coverage enhancement for NLOS mmwave links using passive reflectors,” IEEE Open J. Commun. Soc., vol. 1, pp. 263–281, 2020.