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Thu, 02 Feb 2012
Running your own Node-B

Its now nearly 3 and a half year ago that I wrote the first "Proof-of-Concept" code to get the Siemens BS-11 GSM Basestation up and running. So I think it was time to start with 3G, now that LTE is being actively deployed. You also can sometimes find reasonable priced, used Node-Bs which makes getting access to the equipment possible. A Node-B is the 3G equivalent of a GSM BTS.

So I spent quite a lot of time spread of several months to get a Node-B up and running. Compared with the BS-11 this was a lot more difficult and required much more time. Of course the Air Interface is completely different, in my case I looked at WCDMA FDD so far, there a few more standards used in other parts of the world. Then you have to deal with a huge, different specification, the most important when dealing with a Node-B are NBAP (TS 25.433) and RRC (TS 25.331), around 3000 pages in total. NBAP, the Node-B Application Part, is used to configure the Node-B and do things like creating Radio Links (communication channels) to the phone. RRC, the Radio Resource Control, is the Layer-3 protocol for the control plane between the phone and the access network. It is responsible for accessing the network, setting up and releasing connections or paging a phone. Both NBAP and RRC make use of ASN.1 which makes things not necessarily easier ;-) There are a few more protocols on the lower layers involved like MAC (TS 25.321), RLC (TS 25.322) and FP (TS 25.435 and TS 25.427).

The Node-Bs I used can run "Iub over IP" (Iub is the interface between the Node-B and the RNC, similar to Abis in GSM between the BTS and BSC). Originally Iub is based on ATM which runs over E1/T1 or similar lines with higher data rates. However "Iub over ATM" adds a few more protocol layers for dealing with ATM and I really wanted to avoid this additional complexity. Not all Node-Bs can automatically do "Iub over IP", usually it requires an additional hardware option (interface card). When using "Iub over IP" you have to deal with protocols like UDP and SCTP which are much more convenient.

The current status is a very minimal implementation of something like an RNC to run the Node-B so that a phone can register on the network and do simple things like SMS on the control plane. No user plane like speech or data yet, but this is the next steps I plan to do. The code is not yet public but it will be when it gets more evolved.

There is still a lot left to research and experiment with. For example I haven't looked at things like HSPA yet, I completely ignore handover to other cells as there is only one cell in my experimental setup. So I am sure 3G will give a few more years of a very interesting field to play with before looking at LTE ;-)

[ /gsm | permanent link ]