Joshua Ofori Boateng

391C Durham Center

613 Morrill Road, Ames, IA 50011

Center for Wireless, Communities & Innovation (WiCI)

I am a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation (WiCI) affiliated with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. I build open, reliable, and scalable next-generation wireless systems — and the living-lab infrastructure needed to evaluate them under the challenging conditions of the real world.

My research focuses on Democratizing 5G/6G systems through open, reliable and scalable wireless infrastructure. Working at the intersection of wireless systems, networked infrastructure, and software engineering. I lead the design and deployment of the ARA Wireless Living Lab — a large-scale, fully programmable Open RAN testbed serving over 170 researchers across the U.S. In 2024 I spent a semester at Microsoft Research building a GEO-based 5G non-terrestrial network testbed.

My long-term vision is to make next-generation wireless innovation accessible, affordable, and deployable for rural, agricultural, and underserved communities, across Iowa, the broader Midwest and the United States as a whole.

Research Interests

Open, Programmable & AI-native RAN

Open-source 5G/6G stacks (OCUDU, OAI), software-defined and intelligent RAN control, multi-tenant infrastructure.

Wireless Testbeds & Living Labs

Large-scale experimental 5G/6G platforms, real-world open RAN prototyping, reproducible wireless experimentation.

URLLC & Deterministic Wireless

Measurement-driven latency modeling, system-level tuning for predictable low-latency 5G/6G, precision agriculture.

At a Glance

3×

Best Paper / Demo Awards

170+

Researchers using ARA

$20M+

Funded projects involved

100+

Citations

jboateng@iastate.edu · CV (PDF) · LinkedIn

news

May 31, 2026	Joining the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and WiCI at Iowa State University as a Research Assistant Professor, effective June 1, 2026.
May 12, 2026	Successfully defended my PhD dissertation, Toward Democratizing 5G: Enabling Open, Reliable and Scalable Wireless Systems for Use and Innovation, at Iowa State University.
Nov 01, 2025	Presented multi-cell srsRAN tuning on ARA at the srsRAN Project Fall Workshop, Arlington, VA, and our URLLC work at the First OAI Foundation U.S. Hands-on Workshop, Austin, TX.
Oct 01, 2025	Our paper “Real-world integration and evaluation of open-source 5G core with commercial RAN” was presented at IEEE MILCOM 2025, Los Angeles, CA.
Jun 25, 2025	Best Paper Award at IEEE NetSoft 2025 (Budapest) for AraRACH: Enhancing NextG Random Access Reliability in Programmable Wireless Living Labs.
Jan 15, 2025	Our ARA Wireless Living Lab system paper appeared in Elsevier Computer Networks (Vol. 263). Read it.

selected publications

ComNet

Design and Implementation of ARA Wireless Living Lab for Rural Broadband and Applications

T. U. Islam, Joshua Ofori Boateng, M. Nadim, G. Zu, M. Shahid, and 29 more authors

Elsevier Computer Networks, 2025

Bib HTML

@article{islam2025ara,
  title = {Design and Implementation of {ARA} Wireless Living Lab for Rural Broadband and Applications},
  author = {Islam, T. U. and Boateng, Joshua Ofori and Nadim, M. and Zu, G. and Shahid, M. and Li, X. and Zhang, T. and Reddy, S. and Xu, W. and Atalar, A. and Lee, V. and Chen, Y. and Gossling, E. and Permatasari, E. and Somiah, C. and Perrin, O. and Meng, Z. and Afzal, R. and Babu, Sarath and Soliman, M. and Hussain, A. and Qiao, D. and Zheng, M. and Boyraz, O. and Guan, Y. and Arora, A. and Selim, M. Y. and Ahmad, A. and Cohen, M. B. and Luby, M. and Chandra, R. and Gross, J. and Keahey, K. and Zhang, H.},
  journal = {Elsevier Computer Networks},
  volume = {263},
  pages = {111188},
  year = {2025},
  issn = {1389-1286},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
}

NetSoft

AraRACH: Enhancing NextG Random Access Reliability in Programmable Wireless Living Labs

Joshua Ofori Boateng, T. Zhang, G. Zu, T. U. Islam, S. Babu, and 4 more authors

In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft). Best Paper Award , Jun 2025

Best Paper Award arXiv Bib HTML

true

@inproceedings{boateng2025ararach,
  title = {{AraRACH}: Enhancing {NextG} Random Access Reliability in Programmable Wireless Living Labs},
  author = {Boateng, Joshua Ofori and Zhang, T. and Zu, G. and Islam, T. U. and Babu, S. and Kaltenberger, F. and Schmidt, R. and Zhang, H. and Qiao, D.},
  booktitle = {Proc. IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)},
  pages = {362--370},
  address = {Budapest, Hungary},
  month = jun,
  year = {2025},
}

ICC

AraSDR: End-to-End, Fully-Programmable Living Lab for 5G and Beyond

Joshua Ofori Boateng, T. Zhang, G. Zu, T. U. Islam, S. Babu, and 2 more authors

In Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Jun 2024

DOI Bib HTML

@inproceedings{boateng2024arasdr,
  title = {{AraSDR}: End-to-End, Fully-Programmable Living Lab for {5G} and Beyond},
  author = {Boateng, Joshua Ofori and Zhang, T. and Zu, G. and Islam, T. U. and Babu, S. and Zhang, H. and Qiao, D.},
  booktitle = {Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)},
  pages = {1758--1763},
  month = jun,
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1109/ICC51166.2024.10623061},
}

WiNTECH

AraMIMO: Programmable TVWS mMIMO Living Lab for Rural Wireless

T. U. Islam, T. Zhang, Joshua Ofori Boateng, E. Gossling, G. Zu, and 3 more authors

In Proc. ACM Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation & Characterization (WiNTECH). Best Paper Award , Oct 2023

Best Paper Award Bib HTML

true

@inproceedings{islam2023aramimo,
  title = {{AraMIMO}: Programmable {TVWS} m{MIMO} Living Lab for Rural Wireless},
  author = {Islam, T. U. and Zhang, T. and Boateng, Joshua Ofori and Gossling, E. and Zu, G. and Babu, S. and Zhang, H. and Qiao, D.},
  booktitle = {Proc. ACM Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental Evaluation \& Characterization (WiNTECH)},
  pages = {9--16},
  address = {Madrid, Spain},
  month = oct,
  year = {2023},
}