| The 5G system has the ambition of responding to the widest range of services and applications in the history of mobile and wireless communications. Addressing the question of how a platform can host and integrate verticals and concurrently deal with reconciling their competing and opposing requirements, requires operational 5G/B5G infrastructures that can host various vertical industries’ applications. The validation/assessment of use cases via suitable experimentation platforms is fundamental in the development of any new mobile network technology, especially when the corresponding UCs are explicitly correlated to real market needs. After assessing the recent European initiatives in the H2020/5G-PPP and the SNS-JU frameworks, our works focuses upon the innovative ecosystem created by the 6G-PATH project. The 6G-PATH experimentation environment is designed as a distributed, multi-testbed platform that enables coordinated experimentation across geographically dispersed infrastructures while preserving local autonomy and technological diversity. The paper identifies and discusses the corresponding experimentation framework, as it is realized via a federated architectural approach consisting of distinct layers that collectively enable secure access, orchestration, and observability. All involved components, per layer, are discussed as of their specific roles and functionalities |
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