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SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

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Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#11

Post by throwup238 »

bri3d wrote: post #8
miav wrote: post #2

Could anyone more knowledgeable on the topic explain to what extent common wireless connectivity standards are open and feasible to implement for, say, a medium sized company? Apple has been working on a 5G modem for what feels like a billion years, but other standards seem to be more democratized.

The big problem is patents and copyright. No common wireless standards are open. No wireless standards are feasible to implement. Seriously. It's that bad. Certainly a modern 4G/5G standard is complex from a hardware standpoint to implement - the way you usually do these is using a very powerful embedded DSP, which is also not open (Qualcomm Hexagon is the most reverse-engineered of these if you want to understand wh…

If I remember correctly, all the documentation needed to implement a 5G radio approaches 10,000 pages. It’s not only insanely long and complicated but there’s a nasty path dependency with most of 4G which is why Intel and now Apple have such a hard time getting their radios to the finish line. Poaching a few Qualcomm or Broadcom employees with better salaries is one thing but without the cumulative expertise contained within the companies, it’s almost impossible to bootstrap a new radio.

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#12

Post by maxloh »

Can someone explain the use case for this project?

Is it intended for device vendors creating phones and tablets or for telecom companies building their own infrastructures?

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#13

Post by wmf »

maxloh wrote: post #12

Can someone explain the use case for this project? Is it intended for device vendors creating phones and tablets or for telecom companies building their own infrastructures?

This is the tower side (RAN) not the phone side (UE). It's not clear who the audience is. I assume it's equipment vendors since running a real carrier on USRPs seems janky.

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#14

Post by ksec »

bri3d wrote: post #8
miav wrote: post #2

Could anyone more knowledgeable on the topic explain to what extent common wireless connectivity standards are open and feasible to implement for, say, a medium sized company? Apple has been working on a 5G modem for what feels like a billion years, but other standards seem to be more democratized.

The big problem is patents and copyright. No common wireless standards are open. No wireless standards are feasible to implement. Seriously. It's that bad. Certainly a modern 4G/5G standard is complex from a hardware standpoint to implement - the way you usually do these is using a very powerful embedded DSP, which is also not open (Qualcomm Hexagon is the most reverse-engineered of these if you want to understand wh…

>No common wireless standards are open, No wireless standards are feasible to implement.

What is definition of "Open" here?

The current submission is entirely about Open Source 4G/5G. Fabrice Bellard on top of the crazy amount of other stuff he did also made a LTE/NR Base Station Software [1]. WiFi and Bluetooth are also "Open".

>But the thing that's holding Apple up is purely legal IMO

People constantly mistaken having an open standard regardless of patents and an useable product on the market. There is no reason why you cant have a software modem aka Icera that was acquired by Nvidia in the early 10s. And there are no modem monopoly by Qualcomm which is common misconception across all the threads on HN and wider internet. MediaTek, Samsung, Huawei, Spreadtrum and a few others have been shipping 4G / 5G Modem on the market for years.

The only reason why Apple hasn't released a modem 6 years after they acquired the modem asset from Intel is because having a decent modem, performance / watt comparatively to what on market is Hard. Insanely hard. You have Telecoms from top 50 market each with slightly different hardware software spectrum combination and scenario along with different climate and terrains. It took Mediatek and Samsung years with lots of testing and real world usage at the lower end phone to gain valuable insight. Still not as good as Qualcomm but at least it gets to a point no one is complaining as much.

[1] https://bellard.org/lte/

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#15

Post by 1oooqooq »

maxloh wrote: post #12

Can someone explain the use case for this project? Is it intended for device vendors creating phones and tablets or for telecom companies building their own infrastructures?

ccc camp et al always have a 3G tower built on the older version of this. I'm no radio person but it's awesome to get a conf sim card and hack away

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#16

Post by vbitz »

monocasa wrote: post #10
miav wrote: post #2

Could anyone more knowledgeable on the topic explain to what extent common wireless connectivity standards are open and feasible to implement for, say, a medium sized company? Apple has been working on a 5G modem for what feels like a billion years, but other standards seem to be more democratized.

Fabrice Bellard open sourced a 4G (LTE) base station. https://bellard.org/lte/

It doesn't seam open source?

> The LTE/NR eNodeB/gNodeB software is commercialized by Amarisoft.

> A UE simulator is now available. It simulates hundreds of terminals sharing the same antenna. It uses the same hardware configuration as the LTE eNodeB.

> An embebbed NB-IoT modem based on Amarisoft UE software.

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#17

Post by doublepg23 »

monocasa wrote: post #10
miav wrote: post #2

Could anyone more knowledgeable on the topic explain to what extent common wireless connectivity standards are open and feasible to implement for, say, a medium sized company? Apple has been working on a 5G modem for what feels like a billion years, but other standards seem to be more democratized.

Fabrice Bellard open sourced a 4G (LTE) base station. https://bellard.org/lte/

I assume Fabrice Bellard will crack cold fusion as a side project some day.

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#18

Post by kurokawad »

maxloh wrote: post #12

Can someone explain the use case for this project? Is it intended for device vendors creating phones and tablets or for telecom companies building their own infrastructures?

Cellular comms. are all complex, proprietary, closed standards by big telecoms companies. There are some projects trying to solve this: OpenRAN, OpenAirInterface, O-RAN Alliance.

This project tries to build an open solution following O-RAN standards for RAN software. It is targeting telecom. companies for their Radio Access Network (RAN). Their infrastructure is divided into the Core Network (like a simple internet network) and the Radio Access Network (base stations, antennas and all that stuff). Phones and tablets are User Equipment (UE), nothing to do with srsRAN.

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#19

Post by user_7832 »

miav wrote: post #2

Could anyone more knowledgeable on the topic explain to what extent common wireless connectivity standards are open and feasible to implement for, say, a medium sized company? Apple has been working on a 5G modem for what feels like a billion years, but other standards seem to be more democratized.

From my limited understanding, the issue for Apple et al isn’t making a 5g chip, it’s making the chip small, cheap, power efficient enough and capable of having “decent” reception. I’d imagine existing patents by Qualcomm certainly make it a bit more challenging on terms of available (design) options.

Re: SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

#20

Post by bri3d »

ksec wrote: post #14
bri3d wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem is patents and copyright. No common wireless standards are open. No wireless standards are feasible to implement. Seriously. It's that bad. Certainly a modern 4G/5G standard is complex from a hardware standpoint to implement - the way you usually do these is using a very powerful embedded DSP, which is also not open (Qualcomm Hexagon is the most reverse-engineered of these if you want to understand wh…

>No common wireless standards are open, No wireless standards are feasible to implement. What is definition of "Open" here? The current submission is entirely about Open Source 4G/5G. Fabrice Bellard on top of the crazy amount of other stuff he did also made a LTE/NR Base Station Software [1]. WiFi and Bluetooth are also "Open". >But the thing that's holding Apple up is purely legal IMO People constantly mistaken hav…

> What is definition of "Open" here?

Patent unencumbered in a way that someone could make a commercially viable implementation as a "small or midsized" company, as the parent post asked. Open Source proves my point - the issue is not implementation (note - I'm not claiming implementation isn't hard, it is - I certainly know from personal experience that it is and I would never claim to be able to personally build an energy efficient 4G or 5G modem, but I don't think that raw engineering horsepower is what's holding Apple/Intel/NVidia back here).

> MediaTek, Samsung, Huawei, Spreadtrum and a few others have been shipping 4G / 5G Modem on the market for years.

The CCP effectively told Qualcomm to get lost in 2015 and Taiwan settled an antitrust agreement between them and MediaTek in 2018, so MediaTek, Huawei, and Unisoc/Spreadtrum are not good examples here. I believe the South Korean government also intervened on behalf of Samsung. Actually, the list of modem vendors you list pretty much matches exactly the list of governments who prosecuted, fined, and settled with Qualcomm for antitrust.

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