This experiment aims to demonstrate the deployment of a mobile network based on hardware and software, integrating a 4G RAN and a 5G Core with the Service-Based Architecture (SBA), as illustrated by the following image. This experiment's main goal is to demonstrate a connection between UE in hardware (conventional cell phone), 4G RAN in hardware (SDR - Software-Defined Radio) and software, and 5G SBA core implemented in software.
Requirements
The minimum hardware requirement and software to run this experiment is shown in the image below.
- Smartphone Android
- SIM card (writable)
- USRP B210
- Mini PC (RAM: 4GB and disk space: 40GB)
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
- Docker 18.09.7
- srsLTE release 19_12
- free5GC stage 1
Steps
We need two tools to run this experiment, Git and Docker
To install Git, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install git-all
To install Docker, run the following commands:
sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable"
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
After, we can clone the NetSoft2020-Tutorial4-Demo2-Exp2 project:
git clone https://github.com/LABORA-INF-UFG/NetSoft2020-Tutorial4-Demo2-Exp2.git
To build the eNB and all 5GC images, use the following command:
sudo docker build -t netsoft2020tutorial4demo2exp2 .
To run the containers, use the following command:
sudo docker-compose up -d
Done! The software is successfully installed.
We can check if the images are up:
sudo docker image ls
The output should be similar to the following:
We can check if the containers are up:
sudo docker-compose ps
The output should be similar to the following:
The first step of the experiment is to store in HSS the UE's information using the Web Interface of the free5GC project that is available at http://localhost:3000, as is shown in the image below.
We use the openSTF tool to access the smartphone remotely. This software is available at http://localhost:7100, as is shown in the image below.
We can see the smartphone connected in the network called free5GC available.
We use the PingTools Network Utilities tool available at GooglePlay to test the connectivity of the network.
Finally, we can use any app, for example see a video.
The SIM card used is of sysmocom with an Android Samsung Galaxy S7 SM-G930F.
SDR is an Ettus B210 with four antennas connected via USB in the mini PC.
RAN is deployed with the Software Radio Systems LTE project.
The Core is implemented using the free5GC project.