Welcome to Community Update page

Here is the digest of most interesting happenings in and around OpenBTS community for given periods. All community members are more then welcome to participate in generating news and putting them here! ;)

Note: Material in this wiki refers to work in the public release and on unofficial forks of the public release. For information on commercially supported features of OpenBTS, please contact  Range Networks directly.

mid. April - end of May, 2012

Events

• Video recordings from OsmoDevCon are now  available.
• Alexander Chemeris and Ivan Kluchnikov ran OpenBTS setup during  PHDays'12 conference.

Development

• Handover implementation has been started at  https://github.com/dmisol/openbts-p2.8 by Dmitri Soloviev of Fairwaves.
  • Handover is initiated manually, to the next timeslot on the same ARFCN (intra-BTS handover).
  • Normal case: HO command -> HO access -> Physical Information -> Handover Complete.
  • Handover has been tested with USRP1 only, but should be compatible with UHD devices as well.
  • This is still in lab use only: Physical Information is sent in a wrong way, no threads at target site, etc.
• GPRS implementation by Ivan Kluchnikov of Fairwaves.
  • First successful data transfer!
  • Improvement of logging system in PCU, now it is more informative.
  • PDP context activation is implemented.
  • A lot of bugs in PDU segmentation and assembly has been fixed.
  • The next step is to implement data transfer and USF management to support several mobile phones at the same time.
  • Source code available from  git://github.com/chemeris/openbts-p2.8.git (gprs-exp branch).
• Authentication and encryption implementation by Max Suraev.
  • Fixed CKSN exchange with sipauthserve and implemented missing L3 messages parsing.
  • The code is still in alpha stage - no actual encrypted calls possible yet.
  • Next steps - sort-out call processing.
  • Source code available from  git://github.com/zabbal/openbts-p2.8.git (authenc branch).
• Range pushed core support for Multi-ARFCN into public repository. Support for Multi-ARFCN in the Transceiver52M, created by Thomas Tsou, is not merged with this code yet.
• Range pushed it's own implementation of the remote CLI. It's not clear why a cleaner implementation from  OpenBTS-UHD was not cherry-picked instead.

Blogs, press and other media

•  sysmoBTS announced by Harald Welte. Not directly related to OpenBTS (plus closed-source L1 and hardware) but it will be inevitably compared with whatever OpenBTS product out there so it's worth reading anyway.

mid. March - mid. April, 2012

General news and highlights

•  OpenSigtran project  announced PCB design completion.

Events

•  OsmoDevCon 2012 was held in Berlin and gathered many of Osmocom developers led by Harald Welte and some of OpenBTS developers, including David Burgess, Alexander Chemeris, Ivan Kluchnikov and Dmitri Soloviev. See number of reports in blogs/press section below. This event was so successful that it has inspired discussion on  regular Berlin meeting.

Development

Official release development:

• r3457 FPGA code for the RangeNetworks RAD1 hardware is published.
• Various fixes to SubscriberRegistry and Freeswitch configuration for OpenBTS.

Community development:

• According to Tom Cooper,  Osmo-USRP project uses Transceiver and L1FEC from OpenBTS to interface to OpenBSC via OsmoBTS. Code available for testing on  Github repo.
• Dmitri Soloviev finally started with handover. Tiny progress: a mobile is jumping to the neighbour timeslot (triggered from CLI). Patches will be published soon.
• Ivan Kluchnikov is going on with the GPRS implementation. Progress for the last month: Implementation of L1 interface between PCU and OpenBTS is completed. GPRS Attach procedure is implemented, but it should be tested with different mobile phones. Next step is to implement procedures for PDP context activation and data transfer.
• Thomas Tsou continues to refine his Multi-ARFCN implementation. Currently it supports UHD devices only and he has started to work on USRP1 support. Also he started to pushing out his NEON optimized code for OpenBTS transceiver. All Thomas' new code is in  https://github.com/ttsou/openbts-multi-arfcn repo.

Blogs, press and other media

•  Harald Welte's outlook on  OsmoDevCon.
•  David Burgess' notes on  OsmoDevCon.

Both posts contains musings on possible future of open source telecom.

mid. February - mid. March, 2012

General news and highlights

•  Range Networks releases new  RAD1-based dev kit.
• As per Kurtis Heimerl, our Google Summer of Code application is rejected. :( May be next time.

Events

• Both  Fairwaves and  Range Networks were promoting their OpenBTS based solutions at the  Mobile World Congress with great success. Stay tuned for more news.
• Several groups were operating a mix of commercial and public versions of OpenBTS at RELIEF12-2 (29.02-02.03). See that page for more details.
• David Burgess, Alexander Chemeris and Ivan Kluchnikov will represent OpenBTS at  OsmoDevCon - the first ever conference on the open-source telecom software and hardware.

Development

• New Thomas Tsou is working on the Multi-ARFCN support for the OpenBTS. Check out his  gihub repo and the spectrum pictures  1,  2.
• r3202 The issue with Location Update Request (LUR) timeout with turned on RRLP has been fixed in trunk. Now we query RRLP after LUR is completed.
• r3288 A long standing bug in BitVector implementation was spotted and fixed by Harvind Samra.
• r3309 Another long standing bug in Transceiver52M is fixed - we set Rx gain when we should have set Tx gain. Thanks to Robin Coxe for spotting this!
• Various smaller fixes to OpenBTS, SubscriberRegistry mostly related to SIP call flows and transaction handing.
• Multiple people has reported "loss of monolitic time" error with the Transceiver52M when using USRP B100. Reason for this issue is not known yet.
•  Kalibrate-UHD has been updated to correctly work with the USRP external clock reference and support UHD >= 003.004.
• GPRS implementation. Code re-factoring has been done to optimize internal logic. Structure and list for TBFs and TBF allocation are implemented. Basic functionality of L1 interface between PCU and OpenBTS is implemented. GPRS Attach procedure is at the final stage of implementation and hopefully will be finished by the end of the month.

Blogs, press and other media

• Interview with Alexander Chemeris about UmTRX hardware for OpenBTS is published at  hack4fun.eu blog.
• Max Suraev's grumbling on his experience with implementing authentication support for OpenBTS has been  published.

New Year - mid. February, 2012

General news and highlights

• Authentication\Encryption implementation

Source code is available from  https://github.com/zabbal/openbts-p2.8 (authenc branch). Authentication is implemented (much testing is still required though). Protocol for communicating encryption key and related stuff is under review at A3A8A5. Encryption implementation is in progress.

• GPRS implementation

We implemented Network Service protocol and BSSGP for integration with osmoSGSN and OpenGGSN (for that we use libgb from OpenBSC). We added Uplink and Downlink TBF Establishment and Release of Uplink and Downlink TBF. Now we are finishing separation of GPRS application from main OpenBTS code and full implementation of GPRS Attach procedure. Source code available from  git://github.com/chemeris/openbts-p2.8.git (gprs-work branch).

• Ubuntu 11.10 build fixed (thanks Robin Coxe)

• RRLP in OpenBTS 2.8

Curious bug with ephemeris handling discovered (thanks Refik). Another (same?) bug cause phones to fail registration if RRLP request processing takes too long. Both bugs are under investigation.

•  kalibrate-uhd now works with all USRP versions (thanks Felipe Zimmerle)

• Improved web UI has been proposed

Source code available at  https://github.com/zabbal/openbts-p2.8 (webui branch). This code is far from being complete - it's more an illustration of possibility to use jQuery+SSI instead of .cgi to create eye-candy interface.

• iPhone 3G fix

Patch to properly handle GPRS suspension request was merged - this helps to workaround iPhone 3G behavior when phone was previously logged on a 3G or to a GSM EDGE and data connection was used.

• ClockTamers are back in stock:  http://shop.fairwaves.ru/clock-tamer

• SMS in Freeswitch

Arghyadip Paul is hardworking on SMS support for OpenBTS connected to Freeswitch - core functionality is working.

Events

• UmTRX hackathon, Moscow (04.02-12.02)

UmTRX is open and inexpensive hardware for OpenBTS currently under developments. The main focus was on testing first hardware revision and adding support to UHD. Information about the hardware will available soon at  http://code.google.com/p/umtrx/ Software sources available via:  https://github.com/chemeris/UHD-Fairwaves

• Mobile World Congress 2012 (27.02-01.03)

Fairwaves will be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona showcasing their UmTRX hardware for OpenBTS. This will be the first public demonstration of the UmTRX. Contact Alexander Chemeris <alexander.chemeris@…> if you want to meet there and see UmTRX.

• Google Summer of Code (application opens 27.02)

The idea to apply for GSoC was discussed in ML including description of possible tasks for students. Fairwaves volunteered as backup organization to file application if Range Networks couldn't do it. The GSoC administrator to handle application formalities is yet to be appointed.