Published: July 23, 2026
As cellular networks become increasingly software-driven, researchers need accessible platforms for experimenting with next-generation mobile networking technologies. Professor. K. K. Ramakrishnan of the University of California, Riverside, Assistant Professor Shixiong Qi of the University of Kentucky, and Professor Jyh-Cheng “JC” Chen of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University are working to make advanced 5G experimentation more accessible by developing an open-source, high-performance 5G core that will be offered as a service on FABRIC.
At the heart of every cellular network is the 5G core, which manages how mobile devices connect to the network and exchange data with the internet. Historically, these systems have been proprietary and available only through a handful of commercial vendors. The team’s work focuses on building an open, standards-compliant alternative while improving one of the core’s most important characteristics: control plane operations (e.g., a mobile registering with the network, handover of a mobile device from one cellular base station to another), and communication between the control plane, which manages network state, and the data plane, which carries user traffic.
“Our focus has been making sure it achieves high performance, especially very low latency,” Ramakrishnan explained. “We want to make sure that we can minimize that latency for the control plane operations.”
The project extends beyond developing an efficient 5G core. By integrating it directly into FABRIC as a managed service, the team hopes to remove many of the technical barriers that researchers currently face when conducting cellular networking experiments.
“If they needed to experiment or use a cellular core, they’d have to install a version of that themselves on FABRIC,” Ramakrishnan said. “What we are trying to do is remove as much of that burden as possible so that they can just use it as a service that is offered on FABRIC.”
Providing the 5G core as a shared service will allow researchers to focus on testing new mobile applications and networking concepts rather than spending time deploying, configuring, and maintaining complex infrastructure. It also enables experiments that better reflect real-world cellular deployments, including evaluating applications across geographically distributed networks.
The platform also addresses a longstanding challenge for the research community. Because commercial 5G cores are largely proprietary, academic researchers have had limited opportunities to experiment with production-quality cellular core software.
“By using the combination of FABRIC and our core network, [we] actually create an opportunity for academia to work on a real 5G core where they can use it and do some nationwide experiments,” Qi said, even if “they don’t have access to the proprietary cores owned by different companies.”
The implementation is already running on FABRIC, and the team is completing the final security and user authentication features needed before making it broadly available.
“We’re hoping by the end of summer, we would have it as a service for people to experiment with,” Ramakrishnan said.
Once released, the service will provide the FABRIC community with an accessible, open-source platform for realistic, high-performance 5G experimentation, lowering barriers for researchers and accelerating innovation in mobile networking.