A comprehensive evaluation of software-defined radio performance in virtualized environments for radio access networks

Fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks offer flexibility to address various emerging use cases. Radio virtualization enhances flexibility by enabling multiple heterogeneous virtual radios to coexist on the same hardware. One method for virtualizing radio devices involves using virtual machines and containers to multiplex software radio implementations over generic multipurpose radio hardware. This paper reviews security issues in this context, evaluates the experimental bounds of communication for software-defined radio (SDR) devices, and assesses virtualization’s impact on radio virtualization’s performance. This study aims to determine the suitability of virtual environments for SDR applications. The results indicate that container-based radio virtualization performance is comparable to SDR applications running on native Linux.