  The realization of open-source-defined wireless networks in the
telecommunication domain is accomplished through the fifth-generation network
(5G). In contrast to its predecessors (3G and 4G), the 5G network can support a
wide variety of heterogeneous use cases with challenging requirements from both
the Internet and the Internet of Things (IoT). The future sixth-generation (6G)
network will not only extend 5G capabilities but also innovate new
functionalities to address emerging academic and engineering challenges. The
research community has identified these challenges could be overcome by
open-source-defined wireless networks, which is based on open-source software
and hardware. In this survey, we present an overview of different aspects of
open-source-defined wireless networks, comprising motivation, frameworks, key
technologies, and implementation. We start by introducing the motivation and
explore several frameworks with classification into three different categories:
black-box, grey-box, and white-box. We review research efforts related to
open-source-defined Core Network (CN), Radio Access Network (RAN), Multi-access
Edge Computing (MEC), the capabilities of security threats, open-source
hardware, and various implementations, including testbeds. The last but most
important in this survey, lessons learned, future research direction, open
research issues, pitfalls, and limitations of existing surveys on open-source
wireless networks are included to motivate and encourage future research.
