BostonTwin: the Boston Digital Twin for Ray-Tracing in 6G Networks

Digital twins are now a staple of wireless networks design and evolution. Creating an accurate digital copy of a real system offers numerous opportunities to study and analyze its performance and issues. It also allows designing and testing new solutions in a risk-free environment, and applying them back to the real system after validation. A candidate technology that will heavily rely on digital twins for design and deployment is 6G, which promises robust and ubiquitous networks for eXtended Reality (XR) and immersive communications solutions. In this paper, we present BostonTwin, a dataset that merges a high-fidelity 3D model of the city of Boston, MA, with the existing geospatial data on cellular base stations deployments, in a ray-tracing-ready format. Thus, BostonTwin enables not only the instantaneous rendering and programmatic access to the building models, but it also allows for an accurate representation of the electromagnetic propagation environment in the real-world city of Boston. The level of detail and accuracy of this characterization is crucial to designing 6G networks that can support the strict requirements of sensitive and high-bandwidth applications, such as XR and immersive communication.

SeizNet: An AI-enabled Implantable Sensor Network System for Seizure Prediction

In this paper, we introduce SeizNet, a closed-loop system for predicting epileptic seizures through the use of Deep Learning (DL) method and implantable sensor networks. While pharmacological treatment is effective for some epilepsy patients (with ~65M people affected worldwide), one out of three suffer from drug-resistant epilepsy. To alleviate the impact of seizure, predictive systems have been developed that can notify such patients of an impending seizure, allowing them to take precautionary measures. SeizNet leverages DL techniques and combines data from multiple recordings, specifically intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors, that can significantly improve the specificity of seizure prediction while preserving very high levels of sensitivity. SeizNet DL algorithms are designed for efficient real-time execution at the edge, minimizing data privacy concerns, data transmission overhead, and power inefficiencies associated with cloud-based solutions. Our results indicate that SeizNet outperforms traditional single-modality and non-personalized prediction systems in all metrics, achieving up to 99% accuracy in predicting seizure, offering a promising new avenue in refractory epilepsy treatment.

Demo: Intelligent Radar Detection in CBRS Band in the Colosseum Wireless Network Emulator

The ever-growing number of wireless communication devices and technologies demands spectrum-sharing techniques. Effective coexistence management is crucial to avoid harmful interference, especially with critical systems like nautical and aerial radars in which incumbent radios operate mission-critical communication links. In this demo, we showcase a framework that leverages Colosseum, the world's largest wireless network emulator with hardware-in-the-loop, as a playground to study commercial radar waveforms coexisting with a cellular network in CBRS band in complex environments. We create an ad-hoc high-fidelity spectrum-sharing scenario for this purpose. We deploy a cellular network to collect IQ samples with the aim of training an ML agent that runs at the base station. The agent has the goal of detecting incumbent radar transmissions and vacating the cellular bandwidth to avoid interfering with the radar operations. Our experiment results show an average detection accuracy of 88%, with an average detection time of 137 ms.

Twinning Commercial Radio Waveforms in the Colosseum Wireless Network Emulator

Because of the ever-growing amount of wireless consumers, spectrum-sharing techniques have been increasingly common in the wireless ecosystem, with the main goal of avoiding harmful interference to coexisting communication systems. This is even more important when considering systems, such as nautical and aerial fleet radars, in which incumbent radios operate mission-critical communication links. To study, develop, and validate these solutions, adequate platforms, such as the Colosseum wireless network emulator, are key as they enable experimentation with spectrum-sharing heterogeneous radio technologies in controlled environments. In this work, we demonstrate how Colosseum can be used to twin commercial radio waveforms to evaluate the coexistence of such technologies in complex wireless propagation environments. To this aim, we create a high-fidelity spectrum-sharing scenario on Colosseum to evaluate the impact of twinned commercial radar waveforms on a cellular network operating in the CBRS band. Then, we leverage IQ samples collected on the testbed to train a machine learning agent that runs at the base station to detect the presence of incumbent radar transmissions and vacate the bandwidth to avoid causing them harmful interference. Our results show an average detection accuracy of 88%, with accuracy above 90% in SNR regimes above 0 dB and SINR regimes above -20 dB, and with an average detection time of 137 ms.

Colosseum as a Digital Twin: Bridging Real-World Experimentation and Wireless Network Emulation

Wireless network emulators are being increasingly used for developing and evaluating new solutions for Next Generation (NextG) wireless networks. However, the reliability of the solutions tested on emulation platforms heavily depends on the precision of the emulation process, model design, and parameter settings. To address, obviate or minimize the impact of errors of emulation models, in this work we apply the concept of Digital Twin (DT) to large-scale wireless systems. Specifically, we demonstrate the use of Colosseum, the world's largest wireless network emulator with hardware-in-the-loop, as a DT for NextG experimental wireless research at scale. As proof of concept, we leverage the Channel emulation scenario generator and Sounder Toolchain (CaST) to create the DT of a publicly-available over-the-air indoor testbed for sub-6 GHz research, namely, Arena. Then, we validate the Colosseum DT through experimental campaigns on emulated wireless environments, including scenarios concerning cellular networks and jamming of Wi-Fi nodes, on both the real and digital systems. Our experiments show that the DT is able to provide a faithful representation of the real-world setup, obtaining an average accuracy of up to 92.5% in throughput and 80% in Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR).

SignCRF: Scalable Channel-agnostic Data-driven Radio Authentication System

Radio Frequency Fingerprinting through Deep Learning (RFFDL) is a data-driven IoT authentication technique that leverages the unique hardware-level manufacturing imperfections associated with a particular device to recognize (fingerprint) the device based on variations introduced in the transmitted waveform. The proposed SignCRF is a scalable, channel-agnostic, data-driven radio authentication platform with unmatched precision in fingerprinting wireless devices based on their unique manufacturing impairments and independent of the dynamic channel irregularities caused by mobility. SignCRF consists of (i) a baseline classifier finely trained to authenticate devices with high accuracy and at scale; (ii) an environment translator carefully designed and trained to remove the dynamic channel impact from RF signals while maintaining the radio's specific signature; (iii) a Max-Rule module that selects the highest precision authentication technique between the baseline classifier and the environment translator per radio. We design, train, and validate the performance of SignCRF for multiple technologies in dynamic environments and at scale (100 LoRa and 20 WiFi devices). We demonstrate that SignCRF significantly improves the RFFDL performance by achieving as high as 5x and 8x improvement in correct authentication of WiFi and LoRa devices when compared to the state-of-the-art, respectively.

CaST: A Toolchain for Creating and Characterizing Realistic Wireless Network Emulation Scenarios

Large-scale wireless testbeds have been extensively used by researchers in the past years. Among others, high-fidelity FPGA-based emulation platforms have unique capabilities in faithfully mimicking the conditions of real-world wireless environments in real-time, at scale, and with full repeatability. However, the reliability of the solutions developed in emulated platforms is heavily dependent on the emulation precision. CaST brings to the wireless network emulator landscape what it has been missing so far: an open, virtualized and software-based channel generator and sounder toolchain with unmatched precision in creating and characterizing quasi-real-world wireless network scenarios. CaST consists of (i) a framework to create mobile wireless scenarios from ray-tracing models for FPGA-based emulation platforms, and (ii) a containerized Software Defined Radio-based channel sounder to precisely characterize the emulated channels. We design, deploy and validate multi-path mobile scenarios on the world's largest wireless network emulator, Colosseum, and further demonstrate that CaST achieves up to 20 ns accuracy in sounding the Channel Impulse Response tap delays, and 0.5 dB accuracy in measuring the tap gains.

Colosseum: Large-Scale Wireless Experimentation Through Hardware-in-the-Loop Network Emulation

Colosseum is an open-access and publicly-available large-scale wireless testbed for experimental research via virtualized and softwarized waveforms and protocol stacks on a fully programmable, "white-box" platform. Through 256 state-of-the-art Software-defined Radios and a Massive Channel Emulator core, Colosseum can model virtually any scenario, enabling the design, development and testing of solutions at scale in a variety of deployments and channel conditions. These Colosseum radio-frequency scenarios are reproduced through high-fidelity FPGA-based emulation with finite-impulse response filters. Filters model the taps of desired wireless channels and apply them to the signals generated by the radio nodes, faithfully mimicking the conditions of real-world wireless environments. In this paper we describe the architecture of Colosseum and its experimentation and emulation capabilities. We then demonstrate the effectiveness of Colosseum for experimental research at scale through exemplary use cases including prevailing wireless technologies (e.g., cellular and Wi-Fi) in spectrum sharing and unmanned aerial vehicle scenarios. A roadmap for Colosseum future updates concludes the paper.