NVIDIA has added new tools in its Aerial Research portfolio, further expanding this ecosystem to help accelerate the development of AI-native wireless networks and lay the foundation for 6G connectivity. As the telecom industry increasingly turns to artificial intelligence to deliver seamless connections, even in low-signal environments, and to optimize spectral efficiency and sustainability, these advancements mark a critical step forward. AI-RAN technology, built on AI and accelerated computing from the ground up, is poised to meet the growing demands of billions of connected AI-enabled devices, including sensors, robots, autonomous vehicles, and smart infrastructure.
To support this transformation, NVIDIA’s expanded portfolio includes the Aerial Omniverse Digital Twin on NVIDIA DGX Cloud, the Aerial Commercial Test Bed on NVIDIA MGX, the NVIDIA Sionna 1.0 open-source library, and the Sionna Research Kit on NVIDIA Jetson. These tools are enabling faster research, simulation, and deployment of next-gen wireless systems. More than 150 global organizations, including industry leaders like Samsung Research, SoftBank, Fujitsu, and Mediatek, as well as top academic institutions such as ETH Zurich, The University of Texas at Austin, and the Fraunhofer Institute are leveraging the platform to pioneer breakthroughs in AI-powered telecom innovation.
New Tools for Research and Development
The Aerial Research portfolio provides exceptional flexibility and ease of use for developers at every stage of their research — from early experimentation to commercial deployment. Its offerings include:
- Aerial Omniverse Digital Twin (AODT): A simulation platform to test and fine-tune algorithms in physically precise digital replicas of entire wireless systems, now available on NVIDIA DGX Cloud. Developers can now access AODT everywhere, whether on premises, on laptops, via the public cloud or on an NVIDIA cloud service.
- Aerial Commercial Test Bed (aka ARC-OTA): A full-stack AI-RAN deployment system that enables developers to deploy new AI models over the air and test them in real time, now available on NVIDIA MGX and available through manufacturers including Supermicro or as a managed offering via Sterling Skywave. ARC-OTA integrates commercial-grade Aerial CUDA-accelerated RAN software with open-source L2+ and 5G core from OpenAirInterface (OAI) and O-RAN-compliant 7.2 split open radio units from WNC and LITEON Technology to enable an end-to-end system for AI-RAN commercial testing.
- Sionna 1.0: The most widely used GPU-accelerated open-source library for research in communication systems, with more than 135,000 downloads. The latest release of Sionna features a lightning-fast ray tracer for radio propagation, a versatile link-level simulator and new system-level simulation capabilities.
- Sionna Research Kit: Powered by the NVIDIA Jetson platform, it integrates accelerated computing for AI and machine learning workloads and a software-defined RAN built on OAI. With the kit, researchers can connect 5G equipment and begin prototyping AI-RAN algorithms for next-generation wireless networks in just a few hours.
NVIDIA Aerial Research Ecosystem for AI-RAN and 6G
The NVIDIA Aerial Research portfolio includes the NVIDIA 6G Developer Program, an open community that serves more than 2,000 members, representing leading technology companies, academia, research institutions and telecom operators using NVIDIA technologies to complement their AI-RAN and 6G research.
Testing and simulation will play an essential role in developing AI-native wireless networks. Companies such as Amdocs, Ansys, Keysight Technologies, MathWorks and VIAVI are enhancing their simulation solutions with NVIDIA AODT, while operators have created digital twins of their radio access networks to optimize performance with changing traffic scenarios.
Nine out of 10 demonstrations chosen by the AI-RAN Alliance for Mobile World Congress were developed using the NVIDIA Aerial Research portfolio, leading to breakthrough results.
SoftBank and Fujitsu demonstrated an up to 50% throughput gain in poor radio environments using AI-based uplink channel interpolation.
DeepSig developed OmniPHY, an AI-native air interface that eliminates traditional pilot overhead, harnessing neural networks to achieve up to 70% throughput gains in certain scenarios. Using the NVIDIA AI Aerial platform, OmniPHY integrates machine learning into modulation, reception and demodulation to optimize spectral efficiency, reduce power consumption and enhance wireless network performance.
“AI-native signal processing is transforming wireless networks, delivering real-world results,” said Jim Shea, co-founder and CEO of DeepSig. “By integrating deep learning to the air interface and leveraging NVIDIA’s tools, we’re redefining how AI-native wireless networks are designed and built.”
In addition to the Aerial Research portfolio, using the open ecosystem of NVIDIA CUDA-X libraries, built on CUDA, developers can build applications that deliver dramatically higher performance.
Click here to read the original blog from NVIDIA.
