OpenAirinterface - Towards Truly Open-Source Solutions for 5G Unleashing the potential of open-‐source in the 5G arena

OpenAirinterface - Towards Truly Open-Source Solutions for 5G

Mobile Communications Department

Eurecom

Unleashing the potential of open-‐source in the 5G arena

A bit about EURECOM

§  Research and Teaching Institute –  Location: Sophia Antipolis Technopole, French Riviera (near

Nice, Cannes …) –  Main areas: Mobile Communications, Network and Security,

Multimedia, Embedded Systems –  Affiliations: Telecom ParisTech, Tech. Univ. Munich, Torino,

Helsinki, Trondheim, Chalmers. –  Industrial members: Orange, SFR, Monaco Telecom, BMW,

SAP, STMicroelectronics, Symantech, IABG.

§  ~100 permanent employees, 80 research, 20 admin

§  Combination of applied and fundamental research

OAI - Open-Source Solutions for 5G

Overview

§  OpenAirInterface.org today and Ecosystem

§  Open-source for 5G

§  Software Alliance –  Membership –  License –  Strategic member areas


§  Opensource software-based implementation of 4G LTE (Rel 10) –  Spanning the full protocol stack of 3GPP standard

h E-UTRAN (eNB, partial UE) h EPC (MME, S+P-GW, HSS)

–  Realtime RF and scalable emulation platforms

§  Objectives –  Bring academia closer to complex real-world systems –  Open-source tools to ensure a common R&D and prototyping framework for

rapid proof-of-concept designs

§  Playground –  Commercial UE ↔ OAI eNB + Commercial EPC * –  Commercial UE ↔ OAI eNB + OAI EPC * –  Commercial UE ↔ Commercial eNB + OAI EPC * –  OAI UE ↔ Commercial eNB + OAI EPC * –  OAI UE ↔ Commercial eNB + Commercial EPC * –  OAI UE ↔ OAI eNB + Commercial EPC –  OAI UE ↔ OAI eNB + OAI EPC

Openairinterface.org


*only Realtime RF

OAI Components


Radio Cards + X86 platform = 4G


OAI interconnected with Com4Innov


Industrial Users Today

§  Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs (Paris, New Jersey, Stuttgart) §  ChinaMobile CRAN Project (Beijing)

–  Building demonstrator with OAI software for CloudRAN proof-of-concept, live real-time deployment, 20 MHz TD-LTE

–  OAI software on commodity computing equipment (IBM x86 servers) + commercial remote radio-heads

–  Keysight China (ex Agilent): interop testing for China Mobile CRAN

§  National Instruments / Ettus Research –  Support for porting OAI software to Ettus USRP platforms (B210, X310) –  Roadmap for integration on PXIe high-end industrial platforms

§  Air-Lynx (SME, Paris) –  Rapidly (and less rapidly)-deployable eNB/EPC

h Currently evaluating EURECOM HW and OAI eNB/EPC/UE for public-safety applications

§  Software has been analyzed independently by Intel for maturity in CloudRAN context.


Ecosystem


Ecosystem (current mailing list)


Europe ALU (Villarceaux) - Industry **** Thales (Colombes) - Industry * Air-Lynx (Velizy) - Industry ** IFFSTAR (Lille) - Research UBO (Brest) - Research * Orange (Issy-les-Moulineaux) - Industry Fraunhofer Erlanagen (Germany) - Research Fraunhofer Munich (Germany) - Research TU Berlin (Germany) - Research ** IMST (Kamp-Lintfort, Germany) - Research ** Nat. Inst (Dresden, Germany) - Industry **

TNO (Holland) - Research *** KCL (UK) - Research ** IMINDS (Belgium) - Research UMalaga (Malaga, Spain) - Research * CERTH (Greece) - Research * IASA (Greece) - Research * Inov (Portugal) - Research * NSN (Poland) - Industry *

Asia Kaist (Korea) - Research KHU (Korea) - Research * Malaysia Telecom (Malaysia) - Industry TCS (India) - Industry * IIT Madras (India) - Research * IIT Hyderabad (India) - Research * BUPT (Beijing, China) - Research Geeflex (China) - Industry ** China Mobile (China) - Industry **** Keysight (ex Agilent), (China) - Industry **** CASIA (China) - Research Various undisclosed institutions (China) -Research/Industry **

North America Nat. Inst/Ettus (USA) - Industry ** Intel (Oregon, USA, Vancouver Canada) – Industry ** NEC-Labs (Princeton, USA) – Industry ** Rutgers Univ. (Rutgers New Jersey, USA) - Research ALU (Murray Hill - USA) - Industry ** Idaho National Laboratory (USA) – Research ** University of Alberta (Calgary, Canada) Univ. Michigan (Ann Arbour, USA) - Research *

OAI Software Alliance Strategic Areas


Open-source for 5G

§  Economics of mobile are changing towards a Commoditization of RAN

–  Cloud ↔ SDN/NFV (OpNFV, JuJu + Ubuntu OpenStack + MAAS)

–  Emergence of OpenStack in vicinity of RAN –  Lots of (cheap) open-source hardware starting to emerge –  More generic computing equipment right down to PHY (x86/

ARM) (even maybe PHY) h openBTS, OpenAirInterface

–  Canonical (Ubuntu!) providing orchestration and OS solutions (at least for prototyping today) for cellular networks

§  Example –  OAI: Full experimental LTE implementation (Rel 10)

h real time and with interworking functions: EUTRAN, EPC, UE

h RAN + EPC in Ubuntu JuJu OpenStack offering! F  In a position to provide a full LTE network with VoLTE in

2015! Open-source end-to-end (OAI EPC, ClearWater IMS, FreePCRF)


Open-source for 5G

§  Emergence of hackers in radio networks (or leveraging their work)

–  YatesBTS, Fairwaves: deploying commercial 2G nets based on open-source radio HW and SW

§  Emergence of fully functional 4G solutions on equipment that can be bought at the supermarket (almost, with a bit of help from National Instruments or Lime Microsystems)

–  Or from Crowdfunding projects (e.g. Novena-RF)

§  Mainstream 4.5G/5G will need cheap, easily extensible devices at the edge (for below 6 GHz systems)

–  small (cheap) form-factor but ubiquitous high-quality RAN access –  Example: cheap RRH with CloudRAN (Rel 12 RRH, 25 dBm < 500

euros) → commodity Ethernet + 1588 solutions instead of CPRI, sampling synchronization is an issue, but solvable

–  Support potentially of dynamic switching between RATs in the same RRH –  DSP split between RRH and BBU for fronthaul optimization

§  Mobile Edge Computing (ETSI MEC ISG) –  provision IT and cloud-computing capabilities within the radio access

network (RAN) in close proximity to mobile subscribers h  compute/storage able to perform functions such as content delivery,

low-latency IoT functions h  “edge” or at least RAN-aggregate and process IoT data from a range

of media (both cellular and non-cellular) –  Mix of cloud and RAN technologies (RRH-to-DataCenter approach)


Next Steps for OAI §  Ensure a path 4G → 5G through open-source policy Reference

implementation of Rel 13/14 → 5G §  Work with new carrier candidates now (e.g. UFMC), short packet low-latency

carriers, contention-based access §  VRAN, NFV, MEC architectures §  Rapidly-deployable EPC/eNB (with LTE or other backhaul)

§  Serious contributors from outside Eurecom –  Combination of hackers, academics, SMEs and major industry –  OAI Software Alliance launched at the end of 2014

§  « ready to use » for anybody on commodity hardware (PCs + National Instruments)

–  and industrial platforms !

§  GPLv3 → APACHE v2.0 §  More global adoption for innovation and research (Vendor labs,

University Labs, etc.) → common tool between industrial and academic research

–  Can also be used in 3GPP process for study items

§  Business adoption in test/prototyping market


Anybody can build a 4G/5G network

Serious contributors from outside Eurecom §  Software Alliance (“Fonds de Dotation”) around the

current OpenAirInterface.org development §  Make trusted environment

–  Contributors and users need to secure themselves –  Clear open source rules –  Any individual person or non-profit organization can become a

member for free –  Membership conditions for companies

§  Increase quality & simplify access –  Simple and well described binary build procedures for all the LTE

components –  Friendly to various RF systems (RRH, SmallCell, etc.) –  Anybody can build a fully open-source 4G network comprising a

couple of eNBs + EPC for less than 10K€ and 1 human week of effort


Example Membership Models (a la OpenStack/Eclipse)

§  Strategic members –  ~100k€ per year (reduced to 40k€ with agreed effort) –  Strong voice in decision process (limited number of members, e.g.

8) –  Ability to run projects (e.g. porting for industrial HW targets) –  Ability to attend and host meetings

§  Associate members –  ~10k€ per year, free for non-profit organizations –  limited voice or no voice in decision process (only if merit warrants

this) –  Use of logo / SW certification –  Attend meetings

§  Ordinary (Individual) members –  Free –  Main “workforce”, can commit to codebase –  Can attend meetings and join projects


License

§  GPLv3->APACHE §  Why

–  Core SW (eNB,UE,EPC) will remain completely open-source but more flexible than GPLv3 to work with commercial entities h Open-source needed to maintain research and developer base h Interfacing with other open-source at the periphery

–  APACHE will allow non-contaminating h Interfacing with proprietary HW

F RF/AFE F HW accelerators (e.g. on SoC) F Acquisition systems (CPRI, LabView, etc.)

h Interfacing with proprietary SW F Schedulers F Application/service frameworks F Protocol stacks (e.g. in EPC) F Security/defense applications


OSA Licensing Model


§  FRAND License allows committing software with patent rights into OSA and still keep licensing rights -> Inline with 3GPP fair use licensing policy

§  We are working closely with ETSI for licensing/certification §  Future 5G Core Network developed within eNB/UE will inherit FRAND license (subject to approval from OSA Board)

Conclusion

§  OAI is all software, all IP, and open

§  Integrated tools for a complete experiment life-cycle

§  Flexibility to architect, instantiate, and configure the network components (at the edge, core, or cloud) –  E.g. The network can be packed into a single commodity server/

PC or virtualized as a cloud service

§  Rapid prototyping of 3GPP compliant and non-compliant use-cases –  E.g. Software-define networking or mobile edge services

19 OAI - Open-Source Solutions for 5G

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OpenAirinterface - Towards Truly Open-Source Solutions for 5G Unleashing the potential of open-‐source in the 5G arena