Commonwealth Cyber Initiative launches new outdoor wireless test bed
A new 1.5-mile outdoor wireless network test bed for the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) gives researchers and industry partners new infrastructure to test advancements designed to safeguard our data and privacy.
Running along Stroubles Creek on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus, the outdoor extension enhances the CCI xG Testbed, which has more than 70 software-defined radio nodes at the Virginia Tech Research Center — Arlington.
With indoor and outdoor extensions, the test bed is one of the largest of its kind in the nation, said Luiz DaSilva, CCI executive director and the Bradley Professor of Cybersecurity at Virginia Tech. CCI’s industry partners include Verizon, AT&T, Samsung, Interdigital, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and more.
“As a lot of our lives move toward being always connected through numerous mobile devices, our smartphones primarily, it's becoming more important that we secure those communications against eavesdropping, against malicious access to sensitive data, denial of service, and ransomware,” DaSilva said. “There are all kinds of things that some bad actors may be doing to the network.”
Wireless networks are becoming the backbone for more than our smartphones, DaSilva said. “Networks are evolving toward not just supporting human beings as the main users as it is today, but also supporting other devices, for example, robots or autonomous cars or industrial automation or augmented and virtual reality.”
Funded by the Commonwealth of Virginia, CCI is a statewide network of 47 Virginia colleges and universities focused on cybersecurity. Virginia Tech is well known as a national leader in wireless networks and wireless communication. The university plays a leadership role in CCI, serving as the lead institution for the CCI Southwest Virginia Node and leading the CCI Hub, which coordinates programs across the entire state.
“The indoor test bed in Arlington and the new outdoor capabilities represent a great milestone for researchers at Virginia Tech, but also for future collaborations for academia, industry, and government,” Rose Qingyang Hu, head of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, said at the outdoor extension’s unveiling on Oct. 22.
About the outdoor test bed
The CCI xG Testbed’s outdoor extension uses commercial equipment on the rooftops at three locations on the Blacksburg campus: the Human and Agricultural Biosciences Building 1, Hahn Hall North, and the Animal Husbandry Barn. The outdoor test bed connects to the indoor test bed at the Virginia Tech Research Center — Arlington. The test bed relies on strong collaboration with the university's Division of Information Technology and Division of Facilities.
CCI plays a key role in a $42 million project with AT&T and Verizon that’s utilizing the xG Testbed. CCI is also an Open Testing and Integration Center, providing testing capabilities for end-to-end radio access network interoperability, conformance, and performance in lab and field environments for open radio access networks. It’s one of the few such centers in the United States.
“With a commercial network, our researchers cannot change things and cannot play with the technology, cannot introduce new technologies, cannot test it for vulnerabilities because it's an operating network in the field,” DaSilva said. “A test bed allows us to do all these things. It allows us to actually insert new technologies and see how they work, to test for vulnerabilities so we can impact the network and see how it behaves. It's like a laboratory where you can test things and open them up and break them and put them back together.”
Cyber Innovation and Workforce Development
In addition to research, the test bed is expected to boost innovation in securing wireless networks and give students the hands-on training they need to start their careers, DaSilva said.
“We work a lot with industry, and at the end of the day, they want to see any new ideas, any new inventions tested out in a realistic environment,” he said.
Another vital aspect of the test bed is to support experiential learning for students. Graduate students – including Ph.D. student Asheesh Tripathi and master's degree student Fahim Bashar, both in electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech – have been major contributors to the design and deployment of the outdoor test bed, working under the guidance of its director, Aloizio P. Da Silva.
“Our students are getting their hands dirty and working with real devices,” DaSilva said. “It’s a way to train them at all levels, from undergraduate to postgraduate, in not just the theory of communication and networks, but also the practical aspects – what challenges arise when you actually go out and build something and test it out in the field?”
