Papers for

mesh network developers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Framework enables scalable multi-hop 5G NR sidelink mesh networking

SL-RFSIM: Enabling Scalable Multi-Hop 5G NR Sidelink Mesh Networking in OpenAirInterface

Abstract: Recent 3GPP releases have extended 5G New Radio (NR) Sidelink (SL) to support device-to-device (D2D) relay and multi-hop capabilities. This paper presents SL-RFSIM, a component-based experimentation framework extending OpenAirInterface (OAI) with scalable multi-hop NR SL capabilities. SL-RFSIM replaces the legacy OAI RF simulator with a broker-based publish/subscribe architecture enabling arbitrary peer-to-peer connectivity while preserving compatibility with the OAI protocol stack. The framework further integrates pluggable mobility, propagation, reception, and monitoring services, and supports Layer-2 mesh networking through BATMAN-adv. Experimental evaluation on the SLICES-RI research infrastructure validates the proposed architecture through representative mesh networking scenarios and identifies the current software bottlenecks limiting scalability. SL-RFSIM provides an open-source foundation for reproducible experimental research on 5G NR SL and future multi-hop cellular mesh networks.

Thu 1 OctNetworking and Internet Architecture
The gist
Connecting devices directly without going through cell towers is a growing feature in 5G networks, but making multiple devices relay signals efficiently is tricky. This paper presents SL-RFSIM, a tool added to existing 5G software that helps test and build these multi-hop device connections. It changes how signals are simulated to support many devices talking directly and works with common networking tools for better device-to-device communication. The authors tested their system in real setups to show how it works and where current limits exist. This open-source tool helps others experiment with future multi-hop 5G networks.
Open → 2610.01632v1