Testbed SDR Implementation Approach for Millimetre Wave IoT Applications

Millimetre wave (mmWave) communication is a promising technology which can fulfil the growing demands for spectrum for future wireless networks. One of the key areas for the development of the mmWave networks is the Internet of Things (IoT) communications within fifth generation (5G) and beyond 5G networks. For significant analysis and development of the compliant IoT systems through testbed implementation, current mmWave spectrum transceivers are too expensive when substantial number of the nodes is required by the IoT applications. Considering all the above, it is suggested to use Software Defined Radio (SDR) transceivers with a lower frequency band and with an increased distance between the nodes. The idea is to scale observation time and distance to emulate mmWave radio without actual mmWave hardware. Using scaling factors for the certain system parameters to keep the signal characteristics in accordance with the mmWave band makes it possible. This approach allows to develop mmWave IoT testbeds with significant improvement in the system scalability and cost-effectiveness without the need to transmit and receive the signal in the mmWave band. In this paper, the concept of SDR-based Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) system combined with the observation time and distance scaling approach is proposed. As an example, a testbed with a simple Wireless Physical Network Coding scheme is implemented and demonstrated.