The Resource Manager for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Spectrum Collaboration Challenge Test Bed

Abstract

A key component of success in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) SpectrumCollaboration Challenge (SC2) was ensuring that each competitor had fair access to thelimited physical resources available in the competition. The Johns Hopkins University AppliedPhysics Laboratory (APL) designed and developed a custom Resource Manager as part of the Colosseum,the wireless research test bed at the foundation of the SC2 competition. By allocatingresources through a token system, the Resource Manager ensured that competitors had fair andequal access to resources in the Colosseum. The Resource Manager also provided mechanismsfor automated experiment handling and orchestration that increased the scheduling efficiencyof the resources and gave competitors equal access to all 128 nodes in the Colosseum. From 2016to 2019, the Resource Manager maintained continuous availability of Colosseum resources thatenabled international competitors to develop new artificial intelligence algorithms for radio frequency(RF) spectrum management.