For 5G, researchers need city-sized playgrounds in order to properly test and develop their technologies. That’s why the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today that it will deploy two Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research.

The two PAWR (pronounced “power”) test beds will be in Salt Lake City, Utah, and New York City. For the Salt Lake test bed, the NSF will partner with the University of Utah and Rice University (in Houston, Texas) to oversee the platform. In New York, Rutgers University, Columbia University, and New York University will have that responsibility.

The sheer scale of these test platforms will allow for research options previously unavailable to researchers. “We’ve made limited measurements in the laboratory,” says Sundeep Rangan, the director of NYU WIRELESS, “but nothing at this scale.” Rangan says the platforms will allow more thorough testing of some of the big promises of 5G, including applications such as VR/AR and autonomous vehicles.

Read more at spectrum.ieee.org