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Version: Canary 🚧

Welcome to 6G-SANDBOX

📡 What is 6G-SANDBOX?​

6G-SANDBOX is a Horizon Europe funded research project that aims to support technology and research validation processes as needed in the pathway towards 6G, while following the principles of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and DevOps.

It offers distributed testbeds, tools, and services to support researchers, developers, and industry players in building and evaluating new 6G components and use cases, thanks to the introduction of Trial Networks and the Trial Network Lifecycle Manager (TNLCM).

🏗 What is a Trial Network (TN)?​

A Trial Network (TN) is a temporary, isolated virtual environment built for experimentation purposes in 5G and 6G infrastructure. It provides a flexible, reproducible, and safe experimentation space, enabling stakeholders to evaluate innovations before integrating them into production or larger-scale deployments. It consists of multiple interconnected components (defined in the 6G Library), that can be selected following a modular aproach.

Components can by anything from VMs, containers, configurations, capabilities... if can be described as Code, it can be a component.

Trial Networks are deployed in one or more 6G Sandbox Sites, which are physical locations that host the necessary hardware and software resources.

A Trial Network is fully defined by its descriptor, which is a YAML file that describes the components, their configurations, and the relationships between them. Descriptors are generic and can be reused across different 6G-Sandbox sites, allowing for easy customization and adaptation to specific use cases.

Trial Networks enable:

  • Realistic experimentation in distributed testbeds
  • Safe testing of early-stage 5G and 6G technologies
  • Custom environments per use case or experiment

They are fully managed through TNLCM.

⚙ What is TNLCM?​

The Trial Network Lifecycle Manager (TNLCM) is the central backend system responsible for:

  • Creating, validating, and deploying trial networks
  • Managing configuration, lifecycle and logs
  • Coordinating with other modules like the 6G Library and Sandbox Sites

Basic interactions with the TNLCM can be performed from its Frontend, but more experienced users might want to delve into its REST API or CLI tools.

🛠 Main Repositories​

The 6G Sandbox project can be separated in multiple Main repositories:

Each module plays a role in enabling scalable, flexible, and repeatable 5G/6G experimentation.

👥 User profiles and usage paths​

According to your role and needs, you can interact with 6G-Sandbox in different ways. Here are the main user profiles and their typical usage paths:

  • Experimenter: Uses 6G-Sandbox to deploy Trial Networks and perform experiments.

  • Site Administrator: Manages the underlying infrastructure and ensures the availability of resources for trial networks. Handles the list of components that can be used in trial networks in its site.

  • Component Developer: Develops new 6G Library components or updates existing ones, ensuring they are compatible with the TNLCM and can be used in trial networks.

🚀 Get started​

🆕 Check the Release Notes for the latest updates.

💬 Want to contribute? Read the Contributing Guide to learn how to add or improve documentation.