UB, SUNY Poly to democratize wireless network research with UnionLabs project

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The University at Buffalo and SUNY Polytechnic Institute are creating an open ecosystem for collaboration on wireless network research and the sharing of data, code and hardware. 

The project, “SUNY OpenIoTLab: The SUNY Laboratory Federation for Wireless Intelligent Internet of Things,” is a recipient of a $60,000 SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grant.

Ultimately, the project will develop UnionLabs, an open, cloud-enabled federation of heterogeneous testbeds for sharing data, code, software and hardware resources for research in next-generation networks and wireless Internet of Things. Currently, there isn’t a mature and shared facility to support rigorous and repeatable experimental evaluation of wireless networked systems, which have seen significant change in the past few decades. 

This joint effort to address that need will be led by UB electrical engineers Zhangyu Guan and Nicholas Mastronarde, as well as Timothy E. Busch, PhD, associate professor in the electrical and computer engineering program at SUNY Poly. 

Other key project personnel include SUNY Poly assistant professor Arjun Singh, associate professors Michael J. Medley and Daniel Benincasa, and adjunct professor Chester Wright.

 The proposed UnionLabs initiative will provide UB, the United States Air Force and the whole wireless community an open, experimental ecosystem whereby researchers and engineers can conveniently collaborate and share experimental resources, including data, code and hardware, with significantly enhanced diversity, generalizability and accessibility. Once successfully deployed, UnionLabs would serve as the global entry for academia, the U.S. Department of Defense and industrial researchers to conduct experimental research in the field of next-generation networks and wireless Internet of Things.

“Given the evolution of wireless network systems in recent years and the impact on our daily lives, there is a great need for a shared resource for collaboration, education, and experimentation of these systems,” Busch says. “Significant efforts have been made to fill the void, and this project between SUNY Poly and the University at Buffalo is yet another step forward. We are grateful for this grant and for the support we have received from our peers, project partners, and institutions.”

"While existing community shared facilities have significantly advanced experimental research for new wireless systems, it is still challenging to fully meet the needs of experimental wireless research in terms of diversity, generalizability, and accessibility,” says Guan, PhD, assistant professor of electrical engineering who will lead the UB effort with Mastronarde, PhD, associate professor of electrical engineering. “We very much thank the SUNY IITG Program for supporting the UnionLabs vision of SUNY Poly and University at Buffalo. This provides us a great opportunity towards addressing these grand challenges."

UnionLabs’ objectives include:

• Creating a collaborative campaign to democratize access to wireless research testbeds with heterogeneous hardware resources, and in a wide range of frequency bands.
  
• Deploying a federation plane that will be hosted in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud to bridge the testbeds and users and enable researchers to share, remotely access and control their resources and conduct experiments collaboratively via a unified user interface.
  
• Building a two-tier cloud, comprising a public cloud powered by AWS and edge computing resources at individual wireless systems to allow researchers to share experimental datasets, wireless communication, networking and sensing algorithms/code, and evaluate them over heterogeneous testbeds.

UnionLabs’ federation plane APIs will be made available for other wireless testbeds to join the federation. The UnionLabs team also plans to eventually commercialize it by launching a startup, ensuring that it is sustainable long-term.