To boost India’s 5G ecosystem and achieve several objectives laid out in the Aatmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India) and Make in India missions, the government recently announced it would allow stakeholders to use an indigenous 5G test bed for free for the next six months (till January 2023).
Stakeholders include recognised start-ups and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). For a nominal fee, it is also available to 5G service providers, equipment manufacturers, and players from the industry, academia, R&D institutions, and government bodies. According to a press release, the Department of Telecommunications has urged stakeholders to utilise the 5G test bed and expertise to test and facilitate the speedy development and deployment of their products in the network. Interested parties can apply through the official government web portal.
DoT approved the financial grant to set up the multi-institute collaborative project in March 2018 with a total cost of US$ 28 million. The eight collaborating institutes in the project are the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Madras, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bombay, and Kanpur, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER), and the Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT) at IIT-Madras.
The 5G test bed is available at five locations. The Integrated Test Bed is at CEWiT and other test beds are at IIT-Delhi, IIT-Hyderabad, IIT-Kanpur, and IISc. CEWiT also offers end-to-end test beds with various testing services for RAN and PHY levels as well as other test equipment. IIT-Hyderabad has facilities for gNB Testing, UE testing, end-to-end interoperability testing, and NB-IoT testing. IISc hosts the V2X and 5G open-source testbed. IIT-Kanpur hosts the base-band test bed and IIT-Delhi hosts the NB-IoT and VLC test bed.
The end-to-end test bed is compliant with the global 3GPP and ORAN standards. The indigenous 5G test beds allow Indian academia and industry research teams to validate their products, prototypes, and algorithms and demonstrate various services. It provides complete access for research teams to work on novel concepts/ideas that hold potential for standardisation in India and on a global scale.
It offers the facilities of 5G networks to experiment and demonstrate applications and use cases that are important to India specifically, like rural broadband, smart city applications, and intelligent transport system (ITS). The government believes it will help Indian operators understand the working of 5G technologies and plan their future networks.
The development of the test bed is a key milestone step for India’s becoming self-reliant in 5G technology. The test bed is cost efficient and reduces design time, enabling Indian 5G products to compete in the global market more quickly. The test bed has also led to the development of many 5G technologies/IPs that are available for technology transfer to industry players, facilitating the smooth and speedy deployment of 5G services in India.
