DRIVE-B5G: A Flexible and Scalable Platform Testbed for B5G-V2X Networks

Unlike previous mobile networks, 5G and beyond (B5G) networks are expected to be the key enabler of various vertical industries such as eHealth, intelligent transportation, and Industrial IoT verticals. To support that, B5G networks enable to sharing of common physical resources (radio, computation, network) among different tenants, thanks to network slicing concept and network softwarization technologies, including Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). Therefore, new research challenges related to B5G networks have emerged, such as resources management and orchestration, service chaining, security, and QoS management. However, there is a lack of a realistic platform enabling researchers to design and validate their solutions effectively, since B5G networks are still in their early stages. In this paper, we first discuss the different methods for deploying realistic B5G platforms for the V2X vertical, including the key B5G technologies. Then, we describe DRIVE-B5G, a novel platform that serves as an end-to-end test-bed to emulate a vehicular network environment, allowing researchers to provide proof of concept, validate, and evaluate their research approaches.