When Remah Bani Younisse began developing cybersecurity solutions for 5G-enabled smart grids, she faced a challenge common to researchers in emerging technologies: the lack of realistic datasets.
Remah Bani Younisse, Princess Sumaya University for Technology
An Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Princess Sumaya University for Technology in Amman, Jordan, Younisse’s research focuses on 5G-enabled smart grids, fog computing, cybersecurity, reinforcement learning for cyber-physical systems, and FPGA-based cryptographic implementations. For her work, particularly in intrusion detection systems (IDSs), reliable, representative network data is critical.
“We need to design robust, reliable AI models, especially for cyberattacks and security issues,” she explains. “The data used has to be representative of reality.”
Without realistic data, research findings risk lacking practical relevance and technical rigor, a limitation she encountered firsthand in her work.
Before discovering the IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed, access to meaningful 5G datasets was a significant barrier. As she describes it, the ability to conduct simulations and collect authentic network data was essential to ensuring that her research could stand “on robust ground.”
The IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed offered the solution she needed.
“I spent months searching for the right platform and tried several popular 5G simulators, but none matched the efficiency and realism of the IEEE 5G/6G Testbed. Working with it felt like discovering Ali Baba’s secret treasure — suddenly, I had world class 5G infrastructure at my fingertips.”
Addressing the 5G Data Gap
Publicly available datasets for 5G networks are limited and often fail to reflect real-world behavior. This creates obstacles for researchers developing AI-driven security models, where accuracy and realism directly affect performance. The IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed was created to foster collaborative experimentation across the 5G and emerging 6G ecosystem. As a neutral, open platform powered by open-source components, it allows researchers and industry stakeholders to simulate, test, and validate innovations using real network elements, without geographic or proprietary constraints.
For Dr. Younisse, this meant access to a realistic 5G simulation environment capable of generating meaningful data.
“The testbed allows for doing the simulations, collecting the data, and making any study stand on robust ground,” Dr. Younisse says. “The Testbed let me generate a realistic smart grid traffic dataset in days instead of months, accelerating my PhD work and turning simulations into practice-ready results.”
Simulating a Smart Grid – and Its Vulnerabilities
Using the Testbed, Dr. Younisse simulated an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system, a key component of modern smart grids that enables two-way communication between utilities and consumers.
Within this simulated 5G environment, she recreated both normal system operations and cyberattack scenarios. By capturing traffic through PCAP files, she collected detailed network data that precisely reflected what was happening within the system. From these files, she built a structured dataset designed to support the development of reliable intrusion detection systems for smart grid applications in the 5G era.
“The ability to simulate traffic in a 5G environment and collect PCAP files that exactly describe what happens in the network was the most valuable feature,” she notes.
From Research Foundation to Global Impact
The dataset generated through the IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed became a central chapter of Dr. Younisse’s Ph.D. thesis. She is currently preparing a research paper for publication in a respected journal and plans to publicly release the dataset once the work is published.
Her experience reflects the broader mission of the Innovation Testbed: to create a collaborative space where academia and industry can work together to advance next-generation networks. By enabling hands-on experimentation with real network elements, the platform strengthens the connection between research and real-world application.
It also underscores the Testbed’s global reach. As a researcher based in Jordan, Dr. Younisse was able to leverage advanced 5G simulation capabilities through IEEE’s globally accessible infrastructure, reinforcing IEEE’s commitment to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity worldwide.
As networks continue to evolve toward 6G and become increasingly integrated with critical infrastructure, realistic testing environments will be essential. Through the IEEE 5G/6G Innovation Testbed, researchers like Dr. Remah Bani Younisse are helping build more secure, resilient systems for the Network of the Future.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]