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SrsRAN: Open-Source 4G/5G

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

#21

Post by femto »

wmf wrote: post #13
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.

srsRAN is both. It includes the source for user equipment in its "srsue" directory.

Use cases are partly captured by the list of customers across the bottom of the srsRAN home page (https://www.srsran.com/). It's great for any company/research group smaller than a multinational base station manufacturer, at which size the big players don't want to talk to you.

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

#22

Post by leidenfrost »

kurokawad wrote: post #18
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 n…

Why can't I create an ad hoc 4/5g network between phones?

Genuine question.

It looks so closed and complex compared to more traditional comms like wifi or even ethernet.

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

#23

Post by nine_k »

wmf wrote: post #13
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.

A few applications I could think of:

- Testing of various kinds. You can get deep inside an OSS base station, inspect and debug things, but likely may not even look at the proprietary innards of a commercial BS.

- Emergency connectivity when the backbone is broken, or did not exist. Most people would bring mobile phones anyway.

- Study / teaching, like MINIX OS or trainer aircraft which you can take apart and inspect.

- Maybe very small local cells to improve connectivity in difficult landscapes (mountains, skyscrapers, underground).

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

#24

Post by femto »

kurokawad wrote: post #18
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 n…

Complex: yes

Proprietary, Closed Standards: no

Here are all the 3GPP 4G/5G standards that govern cellular phone networks:

https://www.3gpp.org/specifications-technologies

Also look under the "Specifications" drop down menu at the top of the page. Every release is listed.

These standards being freely available is why SRS were able to write srsRAN. There is nothing stopping others from doing so either, apart from the amount of information that has to be understood and digested.

Edit: Apart from complexity the other potential barrier is patents, but that's not a technical barrier.

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

#25

Post by RF_Savage »

bri3d wrote: post #20
ksec wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

>Patent unencumbered in a way that someone could make a commercially viable implementation.

Doesn't this exclude all modern cellular standards then?

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

#26

Post by femto »

leidenfrost wrote: post #22
kurokawad wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Why can't I create an ad hoc 4/5g network between phones? Genuine question. It looks so closed and complex compared to more traditional comms like wifi or even ethernet.

The LTE protocol is asymmetric between towers (eNodeB) and phones (UE).

You could build srsRAN and run a local eNodeB instance to form a local LTE network. Given that it has a radio that operates in the LTE bands, in theory you might be able to build srsRAN for a phone and run the necessary base station software (eNodeB and EPC) on a phone to form an "ad hoc" network. It wouldn't be truly ad hoc in that the network would still have a base station, just that it would be running on phone hardware. srsRAN wouldn't be running as an application, but would be replacing the firmware in the phone's LTE modem.

Edit:

Here is a paper by someone who has built an ad hoc LTE network.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.09262

It does exactly the above: using srsRAN (which used to be called srsLTE) to run local base station software (eNodeB+EPC) to get around the asymmetry in the LTE protocol.

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

#27

Post by bsder »

leidenfrost wrote: post #22
kurokawad wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

Why can't I create an ad hoc 4/5g network between phones? Genuine question. It looks so closed and complex compared to more traditional comms like wifi or even ethernet.

> Why can't I create an ad hoc 4/5g network between phones?

Because billing.

All the complexity in cellular can be traced back to making the system secure the whole way back to SIM cards because there is actual money at stake if the system gets cracked.

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

#29

Post by msh »

RF_Savage wrote: post #25
bri3d wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Patent unencumbered in a way that someone could make a commercially viable implementation. Doesn't this exclude all modern cellular standards then?

yes.

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

#30

Post by chupasaurus »

vbitz wrote: post #16
monocasa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, the word "source" never mentioned.
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