Open-Access Research Testbed for Next-Generation Wireless Networks (ORBIT)

ORBIT is a two-tier laboratory emulator/field trial network testbed designed to achieve reproducible experimentation, while also supporting evaluation of protocols and applications in real-world settings.

Orbit News

• SB4 and Grid LTE Deployment  -- Posted on 8 years ago : author msherman
• Massive-MIMO  -- Posted on 8 years ago : author jkol
• Replacement of Noise Injection System  -- Posted on 10 years ago : author msherman : categories Maintenance
• New (Gen 4) Nodes  -- Posted on 10 years ago : author seskar : categories Maintenance
• DARPA Spectrum Challenge and ORBIT  -- Posted on 12 years ago : author seskar : categories Maintenance
• OMF Upgrade  -- Posted on 12 years ago : author seskar : categories Maintenance
• System Upgrade  -- Posted on 12 years ago : author seskar : categories Maintenance
• Upcoming upgrades  -- Posted on 14 years ago : author seskar : categories Maintenance
• New Auto-Approver for Scheduler  -- Posted on 16 years ago : author seskar : categories Maintenance Service
• Sandbox5 fixed  -- Posted on 16 years ago : author seskar : categories Maintenance
• Sanbox maintenance  -- Posted on 16 years ago : author seskar

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The laboratory-based wireless network emulator uses a novel approach involving a large two-dimensional grid of 400 802.11 radio nodes which can be dynamically interconnected into specified topologies with reproducible wireless channel models.

Once the basic protocol or application concepts have been validated on the lab emulator platform, users can migrate their experiments to the field trial network which provides a configurable mix of both high-speed cellular (3G) and 802.11 wireless access in a real-world setting.

Orbit is seeded by a $5.45M/4yr grant from the NSF under the Networking Research Testbeds (NRT) program. The project is a collaborative effort between several university research groups in the NY/NJ region: Rutgers, Columbia, and Princeton, along with industrial partners Lucent Bell Labs, IBM Research and Thomson. ORBIT is being developed and operated by ​WINLAB, Rutgers University. A parallel set of experimental work packages (EWP) was also funded by NSF in order to drive user requirements during the design of the testbed and also provide benchmarks for the usability and effectiveness of the testbed in performing different types of wireless experiments with ease.

The testbed is available for remote or on-site access by other research groups nationally. Additional research partners and testbed equipment/software contributors are actively sought from both industry and academia.

The ORBIT testbed and facility is supported by, and supports the testing of many devices and various hardware and is operated by software which is used to run and control experimentation on the testbed. More information on both the hardware and software in ORBIT can be found on this site. For the basics of starting an experiment with the testbed refer to the getting started document. more specific information on how to use the ORBIT testbed can be found in the documentation section.