srsLTE: An Open-Source Platform for LTE Evolution and Experimentation

Abstract

Testbeds are essential for experimental evaluation as well as for product development. In the context of LTE networks, existing testbed platforms are limited either in functionality and/or extensibility or are too complex to modify and customise. In this work we present srsLTE, an open-source platform for LTE experimentation designed for maximum modularity and code reuse and fully compliant with LTE Release 8. We show the potential of the srsLTE library by extending the baseline code to allow LTE transmissions in the unlicensed bands and coexistence with WiFi. We also expand previous results on this emerging research area by showing how different vendor-specific mechanisms in WiFi cards might affect coexistence.

Easy 4G/LTE IMSI Catchers for Non-Programmers

“…General techniques to set up attacks against LTE include traffic capture, jamming and downgrade to 2G. All these academic works implement IMSI Catchers by modifying the code of open-source software projects, such as OpenLTE [6], srsLTE [7,8] or gr-LTE [9]. Rupprecht et al have very recently used Open Air Interface (OAI) [10] to test compliance of UE (User Equipment) with the LTE standard with respect to encryption and to exemplify a man-in-the-middle attack, but they assume that the UE tries to connect to the rogue base station [5].…”

Owl

“…For what concerns open-source LTE implementations, we use srs-LTE [9] for its very efficient implementation. In addition, the modularity of the architecture and the adherence to the standard terminology allowed us to realize OWL starting from the provided example program to record and synchronize the LTE signal.…”

“…To overcome this limitation a few open-source LTE implementations [3,9,11] provide a viable alternative to perform isolated experiments. However, for what concerns real-world network measurements current solutions either cannot provide complete and reliable information [10,14] or they demand for specific and expensive hardware [1,2,13].…”

“…Our tool 1 is meant for researchers and SMEs that need a simple and economic solution to perform reliable measurements on LTE physical communications between mobile phones and base station. OWL is built on top of srs-LTE [9] that provided us with modular and efficient implementations of LTE physical channels and basic procedures and works with a few software defined radios (SDRs), such as bladeRF [12] and USRP [8], capable of LTE signal sampling.…”