| | 5 | This project was started in 2003 with a major grant from the NSF Networking Research Testbeds (NRT) program. The goal was to develop a large-scale wireless network testbed to facilitate a broad range of experimental research on next-generation protocols and application concepts. The ORBIT (Open Access Research Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Networks) system consists of an indoor "radio grid emulator" for large-scale reproducible experiments, and an outdoor "field trial system" for subsequent real-world evaluations. A 400-node radio grid emulator has been set up in a dedicated 5000 sq-ft facility located at the WINLAB Tech Center building in North Brunswick in ~2004-05. The ORBIT radio grid was released for general use by the research community in Oct 2005, and has served over 500 research groups worldwide conducting a variety of experiments including mobile ad hoc networks, dynamic spectrum coordination, network virtualization, wireless security and vehicular networking. The testbed also serves as a proof-of-concept prototyping platform for wireless aspects of the [http://www.geni.net NSF Global Environment for Network Innovation (GENI)] future Internet infrastructure. An outdoor field trial network has also been set up with ORBIT nodes deployed at the WINLAB Tech Center and Busch campus. |
