2013 International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)
Towards the Development of LTE Networks:
Implementation of OpenIMSCore in
Asterisk/OpenBTS GSM Network
Raja Anwaar Ali, Anooshah Nooshad Khan, Saba Arshad, and Usman Younis
Department of Electrical Engineering
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
National University of Sciences and Technology, H-12, Islamabad, Pakistan
Email: 09beeanwaar@seecs.edu.pk, 09bicseanoshad@seecs.edu.pk, 09beesarshad@seecs.edu.pk, usman.younis@seecs.edu.pk
Abstract—GSM network has been implemented using universal
software radio peripheral. Voice services have been established
between the registered users in our GSM network. Secondly, to
demonstrate the smooth transformation of GSM networks to
LTE networks, internet protocol multimedia core network
subsystem has been integrated in our GSM network, and voice
services have been established between the GSM mobile phone
and IMS open source softphone.
I. INTRODUCTION
Global system for mobile communications (GSM) with
various enhancements is currently being followed in many
countries, including Pakistan. The services included in this
standard are 2G (Digital Voice), 2.5G (Packet Data), and
2.75G (Intermediate Multimedia). In order to add more into
the bandwidth offered using mobile communication networks,
evolutionary standards have been introduced such as 3G (Mul-
timedia). This gives an opportunity for domestic Telcos to
increase their bandwidth while ensuring a smooth transition in
their resident networks. This work presents a transformation of
2.5G networks to 4G networks by demonstrating voice
services using universal software radio peripheral (USRP) kit.
OpenBTS [1] and OpenIMSCore [2], which are open source
softwares, have been used to demonstrate this transformation.
The core network of GSM is modified to achieve this 4G
evolution while keeping the access network same as that of
GSM; this implies that user would be seeing it as a GSM
network with added services of long term evolution (LTE)
network. As a first step, call interface has been successfully
replaced. OpenBTS [3], USRP2, and Asterisk [4] have been
used to implement the GSM network. Later on, Asterisk has
been replaced with OpenIMSCore (call interface for LTE),
and GSM network has been demonstrated up and running. A
voice call from IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) softphone to
GSM mobile phone has also been made.
978-1-4799-2046-4/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE 103
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIV OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY LAHORE. Downloaded on March 17,2021 at 11:38:55 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
II. HARDWARE COMPONENTS
A. USRP2 Kit
USRP2 is a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based
Multi-purpose software radio developed by Ettus Research
[5]. We have employed USRP2 to implement the base
transceiver station (BTS) in our GSM network.
USRP2 is attached with a daughter board/card, which is
responsible for controlling TX/RX, and in some cases the
modulation scheme. USRP2 has a secure digital (SD) card slot
on which the firmware of FPGA is loaded. Similarly, it has
multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) expansion slot
which has not been used in our case. To communicate with
personal computer (PC), USRP2 has Ethernet slot which by
default is configured at IP address 192.168.10.2.
B. RFX-900 Daughter Board
As mentioned previously, USRP2 has a daughter board
attached with it which is responsible for receiving and trans-
mitting signals at different frequencies. Each daughter board
has its own range of frequency and sometimes modulation
schemes.
We have employed RFX-900 daughter board in this work.
The RFX-900 is a high-performance transceiver which oper-
ates in 900 MHz band of the electromagnetic spectrum. This
enables it to be used as a two-way radio frequency (RF) source
in GSM networks.
C. VERT900 Antenna
RFX-900 daughter board has two sub-miniature version A
(SMA) connectors on it, one is used as RX, and other is used
as RX/TX. These SMA connectors are responsible for
transmitting and receiving RF signals. To strengthen the
signals in air, an antenna is needed. Additionally, the antenna
has to be compatible with operating frequency of daughter
board, i.e., 900 MHz. Therefore, we have used VERT900
antenna with RFX-900 daughter board. VERT900 is dualband
antenna with frequency range of 824-960 MHz, and a gain of
3dBi.
D. Personal Computer (Laptop)
Personal computer is a core component in our network. We
 2013 International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)

have used Core i5 in this work along with 4 GB of RAM. PC

with higher specifications is recommended for use with
USRP2.

(a) (b)
Fig.1 Implementation of GSM Network (a) USRP2 kit working as our BTS and computer system working as our BSC and MSC. (b) Manual selection from the
mobile phone shows our GSM network “001 01”, which is highlighted in this figure.

III. SOFTWARE COMPONENTS private cellular networks.

We have used open source softwares to aid our hardware in
this work. The reason behind choosing the open source
softwares is their ease to configure USRP2 kit according to
our needs.
A. UHD Drivers
USRP hardware drivers (UHD) are required to establish
proper communication between PC and USRP2 kit. Without
these drivers Linux, operating system in our case, is not able
to communicate with USRP2 kit. These drivers are freely
available on Ettus Research [5]. We have used stable drivers,
however, master branch is also available for developers’ use.
B. OpenBTS
OpenBTS is an open source software developed by Range
Networks [1]. OpenBTS is a Unix application which works as
a software radio to provide GSM Um interface to handsets,
and uses session initiation protocol (SIP) soft switches to
connect between calls.
OpenBTS is aimed at the development of low cost GSM air
interface, and with the integration of VoIP backhaul, it
achieves cellular communication in rural and remote areas.
This results in a substantial low cost deployment in the formof
The whole software is written in C++ and latest version
available is OpenBTS 2.8. We have used latest version in this
work. OpenBTS uses extensive use of SQL Database to
maintain the records and settings. Instead of working
standalone, OpenBTS coordinates with other softwares such
as Smqeue and Asterisk. OpenBTS uses Asterisk’s subscriber
database to authenticate users on GSM network.
C. Asterisk PBX
Asterisk is a software implementation of a telephone private
branch exchange (PBX) [4]. Asterisk allows attached tele-
phones to call each other. It uses SIP to make calls between
the registered users, whereas, OpenBTS is responsible to map
mobile phones international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI)
as SIP client of Asterisk.
D. OpenIMSCore
OpenIMSCore is the open source implementation of IP
multimedia core network subsystem [2]. The OpenIMSCore
replaces Asterisk when the cellular network is required to sup-
port 3G/4G voice services in our implementation. Similar to
Asterisk, the users are mapped as SIP clients in
OpenIMSCore.
E. MySQL

104

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIV OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY LAHORE. Downloaded on March 17,2021 at 11:38:55 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2013 International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)

(configuration file of Asterisk). We have included IMSI

MySQL is a popular open source relational database man- entries in this file [7]. All the dial plans, i.e., how calls will be
agement system (RDBMS). MySQL is used by both Asterisk
routed, for how long the phone will ring, and what options
and OpenBTS to maintain transaction records, settings, and
user have, are written in specified format in this file. Once the
billing.
registration has been done, users can send/receive status
IV. IMPLEMENTATION messages to our GSM networks, as shown in Fig. 2.
A. Setting up GSM Network Additionally, users can send text messages to other users
GSM network is developed by interfacing USRP2 kit with registered on the same network.
OpenBTS [6]. Once this interfacing is achieved, the USRP2
In order to make a call in our implemented GSM network,
kit integrated with RFX-900 daughter board establishes a
firstly, IMSI (stored in the SIM card) interacts with USRP2.
GSM network, as shown in Fig. 1(a). Asterisk works as virtual
Secondly, OpenBTS maps IMSI to a SIP client which Asterisk
mobile switching centre (MSC) in our GSM network, while
can understand, therefore, establishing a call means SIP to SIP
OpenBTS works as base station controller (BSC), and USRP2
call in computer. Finally, at the front end call is established as
works as BTS. Due to non-calibrated clock of USRP2, not
a IMSI to IMSI call. Figure 3 shows a voice call established
every cellphone was able to detect our GSM network. Figure
between two registered phones in our GSM network.
1(b) shows our GSM network identified as “001 01” while
manually searching for the networks using a mobile phone.
If internal clock of USRP2 is used, clock skew is introduced
in RFX-900 daughter board’s operation, and due to this, not
every GSM mobile phone is able to detect our GSM network.
We tested our GSM network with 38 mobile phones, out of
which 26 phones were able to detect our GSM network.
Therefore, it is recommended to use an external clock for
USRP2.

Figure 3: A voice call established between two numbers registered in our

GSM network (the call has been initiated by 9995125).

B. Integrating OpenIMSCore in GSM Network

Figure 2: A mobile phone registered with number 9995125 can send/receive

status messages by sending a blank text to 411 in our GSM network

Extension registration has been done before making calls,

for which “extensions.conf” is the core file to be ammended

105

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIV OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY LAHORE. Downloaded on March 17,2021 at 11:38:55 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2013 International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)
In order to demonstrate the transformation of GSM network
to LTE network, we have integrated OpenIMSCore in our
virtual MSC. Firstly, OpenIMSCore has been installed and
dial plans have been made in “extensions.conf” [8]. Once
OpenIMSCore is in place, it takes over Asterisk and all the
call sessions are processed through proxy-call session control
function (P-CSCF) module of OpenIMSCore. IMS clients by
standard are stored as SIP clients. Therefore, it is easy to
establish calls between two IMS clients which have already
been mapped as SIP clients in our system. Figure 4(a) shows
IMS softphone (an open source client) [9], which has been
used to call the GSM mobile phone using our integrated
network, whereas, the received call from IMS softphone is
also visible in the call logs of Fig. 4(b).
(a) (b)
Figure 4: Voice call established between IMS softphone (an open source
client) and GSM mobile phone. (a) IMSI, which is registered as SIP client, is
used to dial the GSM mobile phone. (b) The received call from IMS softphone
is visible in the received call logs (the registered number for IMS softphone is
2000).
The voice calls established between IMS softphone to
GSMmobile phones have a latency of 12 s. However, IMS
softphone to IMS softphone call has a latency of 4 s. Total
number of call sessions which have been established using
OpenIMSCore have been six in our case. We attribute this
106
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIV OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY LAHORE. Downloaded on March 17,2021 at 11:38:55 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
delay and limited number of established sessions to the
installation of OpenIMSCore on the same system which has
Asterisk installed. Therefore, it is recommended to install
OpenIMSCore and Asterisk/OpenBTS on different systems.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The transformation of currently deployed GSM networks to
3G/4G networks is a challenge for Telcos. This work provides
a demonstration of an integration which has been achieved
between GSM networks and IMS services of LTE networks.
Voice services have been successfully established between
GSM mobile phones and IMS open source softphones during
the implementation of our integrated network. Therefore, this
work provides an opportunity to develop the integration
frameworks which address the policies of GSM networks and
find their implementation in 3G/4G networks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Mr. Nasir Mehmood, incharge of
the embedded system designs and automation (ESDA)
laboratory, for providing us with USRP2 kit. We would also
like to thank Mrs. Asma Majeed who is a Lab Engineer at
ESDA laboratory for her cooperation. Additionally, we would
like to express our gratitude for Dr. Junaid Qadir for providing
us with USRP1 kit for testing.
REFERENCES
[1] R. Networks, “Openbts,” Range Networks, 2012. [Online]. Available:
http://openbts.org/
[2] F. Fokus, “Open ims core,” Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, 2004. [Online].
Available: http://www.openimscore.org/
[3] A. Apvrille, “Openbts for dummies,” Fortinet, Tech. Rep., Aug 31 2011.
[4] I. Digium, “Asterisk,” Digium Inc., 2013. [Online]. Available: http:
//www.asterisk.org/
[5] E. Research, “Ettus research usrp,” 2013. [Online]. Available: http:
//www.ettus.com/
[6] A. Chemeris, F. Battaglia, and D. Burgess, “Building and runing
openbts,” Gnuradio, 2012. [Online]. Available: http://gnuradio.org/
redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/OpenBTSBuildingAndRunning
[7] N. Bezroukov, “Extensions.conf,” Softpanorama, 2013. [Online]. Avail-able:
http://www.softpanorama.info/Multimedia/Voip/Asterisk/Dialplan/ dialplan
extensions.shtml
[8] A. Galdes, “Asterisk basic configuration example (sip.conf and
extensions.conf),” AGIX Linux, 2011. [Online]. Available: http:
//agix.com.au/blog/?p=2656
[9] F. Fokus, “mymonster (multimedia open internet services and
telecommunication environment),” Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, 2013.
[Online]. Available: http://www.monster-the-client.org/