The EXTREME (EXperimental Testbed for Research Enabling Mobility Enhancements) Testbed® is a multi-purpose fully reconfigurable testbed that serves to validate networking schemes in close-to-real scenarios. Beyond the general framework, it features three specialized testbeds, one focusing on cellular networks, another one focusing on self-organized networks and the third one focusing on hybrid wireless networks. The EXTREME Testbed® combines the ease of management of multi-user experimental facilities with the flexibility of proof-of-concept testbeds.
Some examples of schemes developed and evaluated over the testbed are: distributed mobility management, including mobility in heterogeneous environments, self-organized mesh networks, cognitive networking, smart flow management, data offloading and wireless network measurements.
The EXTREME Testbed® integrates three specialized extensions. The first one is a fully operational packet switched UMTS/HSPA network with a node B and emulated RNC, SGSN, GGSN and HLR components. The second one is the deployment of a wireless mesh network with multi-radio mesh nodes (with up to 4 WLAN cards) in an in-building scenario. The third one is an all-wireless network of femtocells (NoF) connected to a UMTS core network and using WLAN technology as the local backhaul inside the network of femtocells.
General Features
The EXTREME Testbed® provides:
- fast adoption and testing of new emerging technologies in a close-to-real environment.
- a substantial reduction of time from scenario conception to start of the evaluation phase.
- a generic framework to ease the realization and analysis of performance measurements.
- an abstraction of the underlying low-level configuration, so that users focus on concepts rather than scenario configuration details.
with an up-to-date technology especially-suited for wireless scenarios.
It is intended for
- experimental validation of theoretical results.
- rapid and seamless adoption of new emerging wireless technologies.
- implementation of different architectures through a reduced configuration time.
- full end-to-end monitoring of the experimental testbed.
- integration of commercial networking and traffic analysis equipment for interoperability testing.