FikoRE: 5G and Beyond RAN Emulator for Application Level Experimentation and Prototyping

Abstract: Novel and cutting-edge use cases have arisen since the first deployments of the fifth generation of telecommunication networks (5G). There are plenty of well-though optimally design 5G simulators and emulators which allow telecommunication technologies engineers and researchers to thoroughly study and test the network. However, the 5G ecosystem is not only limited to the network itself: a fast development of 5G-specific use cases can considerably accelerate the development of telecommunication technologies. We present FikoRE, our real-time Radio Access Networks (RAN) emulator carefully designed for application-level experimentation and prototyping. Its modularity and straightforward implementation allow multidisciplinary user to rapidly use or even modify it to test their own applications. In this article, we present FikoRE's architecture accompanied with relevant validation experiments and results.