ARA Sandbox Service

Beside the outdoor deployment as specified in ARA Resource Specification, ARA provides a Sandbox for users to test their experiments in a lab environment. The sandbox is equipped with 27 USRP NI B210s in a room and deployed on a panel just below the room ceiling (topology as shown in the figure below). Each SDR is connected to the host computer via USB 3.0 cable. Further, the host computers are connected to the ARA cloud via Netgear switches.

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Sandbox Specification

  • Software Defined Radio (SDR): USRP NI B210

  • SDR Host Computer: Intel NUC

How to Use ARA Sandbox?

ARA considers sandbox as an ARA site similar to any other Base Station (BS) or User Equipment (UE) location. Contrary to the other sites, each SDR in the sandbox can be used either as a BS or as a UE. Therefore, we define the device type of the host computer as Host. The reservation and container instantiation in sandbox follows the same procedures as any other resource. For example, to create a lease, users can select the following attributes in the lease form.

  • Site: Sandbox

  • Resource Type: AraRAN

  • Device Type: Host

On reserving the nodes, users can launch containers and execute the experiments.