Overview of the Colosseum: The World’s Largest Test Bed for Radio Experiments

Abstract

As fifth-generation (5G) cellular technology emerges, it is apparent that the radio frequency (RF)spectrum is constrained by the ever-growing demands of application bandwidth and the number of devices vying for that bandwidth. Databases and procedures for managing the spectrum have become very complex and do not scale to meet today’s on-demand spectrum requirements. In pursuit of novel methods to overcome these limitations, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched the Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) in 2016. The goal of the challenge, which culminated with the third and final competition in the fall of 2019, was to inspire participants to research, develop, and systematically test artificial intelligence algorithms across a network of radios to find the future paradigm for ensuring that the RF spectrum can support the bandwidths that next-generation applications will require. In support of SC2, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) designed, developed, and hosted the Colosseum, the first-of-its-kind wireless research test bed in which competitors tested their algorithms and conducted their experiments in competition events. In addition to introducing SC2 and its goals, this article briefly describes the test bed architecture and the challenge events.