About Open6G

At Open6G, the facility operates on approximately 4600 sq feet of prime space at the Innovation Campus in Burlington, MA. Open6G will allow the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things (WIoT) to design data collection and evaluation experiments by leveraging the hardware and computing resources of the networking experimental platform, which consists of components that span air, underwater and ground programmable wireless and computing infrastructure. Open6G is co-located with Colosseum (the world’s largest radio-frequency channel emulator that will enable the building and testing of intelligent, autonomous, collaborative, wireless technologies for military and commercial use), massive AI computing, one of the world’s largest anechoic chambers

“Open6G will allow unprecedented partnerships between industry, academia, and government to design data collection and evaluation experiments by leveraging the hardware and computing resources of the networking experimental platforms, which consists of components that span air, underwater and ground programmable wireless and computing infrastructure.”

Led by a research and development award by the OUSD R&E 5G-xG program office under the auspices of the Innovate Beyond 5G thrust, Open6G will also serve as a unified FutureG Coordination Entity for the Department of Defense. A foundational output will be to support the development of future 6G dual use technology. Open6G will develop a common reference architecture and open source software stack for B5G/6G based on the 3GPP standard and O-RAN specifications. The reference architecture development will mature and accelerate the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA) software stack.

Open6G will be supported by an array of state-of-the-art facilities and resources:

  • With $30M invested, Colosseum is the world’s largest emulator of virtualized wireless systems. Its massive computing resources (CPU, GPU, FPGA) empower WIoT to research, develop, and test systems like 5G, O-RAN, AI, Spectrum, IoT, or drones.
  • AI-Jump Start Rack’s unique AI+wireless experimental facilities can perform large-scale training of RF datasets collected on Colosseum, real-time, AI-driven signal processing, and model-free adaptation and network control, which allows WIoT to extend Colosseum’s AI capabilities.
  • Arena is an open-access indoor wireless testing platform that can provide a real-time real-channel evaluation platform with fully synchronized testbed and can perform repeatable, flexible, and scalable high-fi indoor experiments.
  • XMili (mmWave) is the largest mmWave testbed available in the nation;
  • Teranova is the first testbed enabling transmissions above 1 THz (or true terahertz), and ultrabroadband real time signal processing.
  • WIoT is home to one of 4 Nationwide FCC Innovation Zones, located at Northeastern University’s main campus in Boston, MA, and Innovation Campus in Burlington, MA.