Single Frequency Networks for 5G Broadcast: a Software Defined Radio Experiment

Broadcast is a mechanism created for the delivery of the same content to many users simultaneously. This technology has been considered in 3GPP as part of 4G and recently 5G. One of the key solutions to enhance coverage when using 5G broadcast is the use of Single Frequency Networks (SFN), where all transmitters deliver the same content at the same frequency in a synchronized manner. This paper is derived from the 5G-ROSE project, which works towards the transmission of 5G broadcast services over SFN virtualized networks, using open-source software. The work is divided into three topics. The first part is the development and testing of the first virtualized Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service over Single Frequency Network (MBSFN) transmission. The second part consists of the introduction of 5G physical layer Release (Rel)-16 specific components. The third part is about the combination of both unicast and broadcast transmissions by means of network slicing. This paper describes in detail the implemented technologies, the testbed facility where these are integrated, as well as the implementation and setup to carry out the experiment.