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Performance analysis and comparison of GPP-based SDR systems

Conference Paper · October 2017

DOI: 10.1109/MAPE.2017.8250816

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 Performance Analysis and Comparison of GPP-
based SDR Systems
Zhiming Geng, Xingguang Wei, Haitao Liu, Rongtao Xu (Beijing Jiaotong University), Kan Zheng
Intelligent Computing and Communication (IC2) Lab
Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communication, Ministry of Education
Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications
Beijing, China
Email: gengzhiming@bupt.edu.cn
Abstract—With the development of wireless communications,
varies of wireless protocols have come into being. For quickly
verifying the new communication technology, the most effective
method is through software. Simple software simulation has been
unable to meet the needs of people for technical verification, thus
Software Defined Radio (SDR) emerges at the right moment. In
this paper, we first make a brief overview of general purpose
processor based SDR (GPP SDR), then review the current state
of development and future trends in this area. Moreover, we in-
troduce two famous GPP SDR platforms, i.e. OpenAirInterface
(OAI) and srsLTE. OAI has been well known by many research-
ers and widely used in scientific research. However, to the best of
my knowledge, there is no detailed introduction to srsLTE. We
set up OAI and srsLTE in laboratory and give a specific analysis
to the key source codes of physical layer (PHY) downlink (DL) on
the platforms. Furthermore, the PHY DL performance is evalu-
ated and compared. Our result demonstrates that OAI and
srsLTE are both feasible and stable SDR platforms, which proves
that GPP is powerful enough to process wideband signal like
LTE. GPP SDR has become the mainstream in the design of SDR.
We wish to introduce these two platforms to open source com-
munity and our results could provide a reference for further re-
search or deployment of GPP SDR.
Keywords—SDR; GPP; OAI; srsLTE.
I. INTRODUCTION
With the development of wireless communications, new
technologies and services are emerging in an endless stream.
As a typical example, cellular phones have evolved from ana-
log wireless communication system which supports single-
standard and voice-only into high-bandwidth multi-standard
communication based on long term evolution (LTE). The 5G
standard [1] is also in a heated discussion at present. However,
the traditional development in communication system has al-
ways been in a static paradigm providing non-adaptable radio
systems. The wireless infrastructure radio designs have been
implemented for a specific purpose using a combination of
Application Specific ICs (ASICs), Digital Signal Processors
(DSPs) and Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices.
All those hardware chips promise a good performance and reli-
ability, but the tight coupling of product and protocols makes it
difficult to operate between various standards. A specific radio
station can only be supported in a specific system. Users and
operators want to build a multi-band, multi-mode and multi-
functional compatible system with features of plug and play
based on a unified platform. Software Defined Radio (SDR)
technology therefore emerges at the right moment which holds
the promise of universal and fully programmable wireless
communication systems. It gets rid of the traditional radio de-
sign ideas that are completely dependent on fixed hard ware for
a special purpose, trying to implement various radio functions
through software based on a modular universal hardware plat-
form instead. Wireless communication technology has reached
a new level taking advantage of software which is programma-
ble, easy to modify and low cost. Thus SDR is recognized as
the third revolution following the fixed-to-move, analog-to-
digital in the communications field.
The SDR platform can be constructed by combining a pro-
grammable radio frequency (RF) front-end with a baseband
processing platform via an appropriate interface. The leading
example RF front-end is Universal Software Radio Peripheral
(USRP) [2] provided by Ettus Research. General purpose pro-
cessor (GPP) is selected by more SDR designers as baseband
processing platform to complete functions like wireless trans-
ceiver, signal generation, modulation/demodulation, encod-
ing/decoding etc. There have been many SDR prototypes based
on GPP. One of the well-known GPP-based SDR (GPP SDR)
projects is Sora [3] developed by Microsoft Research Asia. It
makes extensive use of modern GPP multi-core CPU and
SIMD extensions (SSE). GNU Radio [4] is a famous free open-
source SDR framework based on off-the-shelf GPP. The com-
bination of GNU Radio and USRP is one of the most popular
SDR platforms for radio designers and researchers. Amarisoft
[5] LTE100 is a commercial LTE soft base station based on
GPP, which performs better in terms of functionality, availabil-
ity and ease of use compared to open source products.
In this paper, we will focus on GPP SDR and analyze the
characteristics of it. Furthermore, we conduct the code analysis
and performance test of physical layer (PHY) downlink (DL)
on two famous open source GPP SDR platforms i.e. OpenAir-
Interface (OAI) [6] and srsLTE [7]. We wish our results could
provide a reference for further research and deployment of
GPP SDR.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section Ⅱ
provides a brief overview of state-of-the-art of GPP SDR. Sec-
tion Ⅲ describes OAI and srsLTE respectively. We focus on
the main procedures and algorithms of PHY DL. Real-time
experimental results on these two platforms are presented in
Section Ⅳ. We draw conclusions in Section Ⅴ.
II. OVERVIEW OF GPP SDR
There are many silicon solutions for implementing base-
band process. On the basis of the physical medium, SDR plat-
form is mainly divided into three categories, i.e. FPGA-based
SDR, DSP-based SDR, GPP-based SDR. FPGA is flexible to
some extent because they are capable of reprogramming and
reconfiguration. The execution time of DSP can be fully de-
termined. However, it is very difficult to program communica-
tion modules on these two platforms. GPP is a flexible alterna-
tive to fixed-function silicon like FPGA and DSP, and it is the
most common form of SDR currently.
A few of the latest SDR platforms are based on GPP. Alt-
hough different platforms may have subtle differences among
each other, they generally follow similar designs and share
many common algorithms. In this section, we describe the ar-
chitecture of the GPP SDR system, then summarize some
common characteristics of it.
A. System Description
GPP SDR platform is designed to utilize GPP to perform
the time crucial signal processing functions as well as other
protocol entities. As shown in Fig. 1, GPP SDR System is con-
structed by a RF front-end connected with a General PC
through the interface such as Peripheral Component Intercon-
nect Express (PCIe) bus / Universal Serial Bus (USB) 3.0. The
RF front-end is a programmable hardware implementing only
the RF and signal conversion functions as mentioned above;
PHY and upper layer functions like medium access control
(MAC) [8] are performed in software in a GPP, then upper
layer interface distributes the signals to different service appli-
cations [9].
General PC
The Real Time OS over Intel X86 CPU
front-end and computer
Higher Layer PHY Processing
Process
Buffer Control
Symbol Level
Processing
Processing
Bit Level
Layer2
Process
Control Unit & Interface
Fig. 1. Top level architechture of GPP SDR.
B. Features of GPP SDR
Compared with FPGA and DSP, GPP is selected based on a
tradeoff between price and performance. In addition to the gen-
eral advantages of SDR like upgradability, reusability and re-
configurability, GPP SDR further offers many other compel-
ling benefits to radio system designers.
 Simplified design method.
GPP SDR uses popular high level programming languages
such as C/C++, Python as development tools. So it can be port-
ed between processors with minimal rewriting required. And a
great number of experienced programmers and well-written
libraries [10] are available. Besides, GPP has a great advantage
in human-computer interaction making it easier for developers
to program in a familiar architecture and environment, which
opens the door to create communities of software radio devel-
opers.
 Powerful computation.
Technology evolution in areas such as multi-core, SIMD,
large on-chip caches, low latency on-chip system memory and
high-speed I/O is making GPP a real alternative to process high
speed digital signals both for current and next generation of
wireless systems. Other branches of computer science like
Cloud computing can also contribute to the improvement of
performance in GPP SDR by distributing multiple cores geo-
graphically concentrated into a virtual baseband pool.
 Better flexibility and scability.
We can use multi-threads and multi-cores to support time
crucial computational tasks in wireless communication systems
enhancing the real-time processing capability, which is a flexi-
ble design approach offered by GPP. It is also easy to integrate
with other applications by blurring the boundaries of radio and
other applications, improving end to end effectiveness.
 Relatively cheap.
Compared with other SDR platforms for a special purpose
like FPGA and DSP, GPP has a larger market size and more
application scenarios. Besides, the development and debug
cycle of SDR is shorter by means of GPP. Therefore it has rela-
tively lower development costs.
III. OAI AND SRSLTE: GPP SDR PLATFORMS
OAI is the first and the most complete open source SDR
LTE platform implementing the full protocol stack of 3GPP
Interface between RF standard in both Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
(E-UTRAN) and Evolved Packet Core (EPC) currently.
RF font-end
srsLTE is a high-performance LTE library for SDR develop-
ment supporting both evolved node B (eNB) and user equip-
TX / RX
ment (UE). The library is highly modular with minimal inter-
ADC / DAC module or external dependencies under a free open source
software AGPL v2 license.
A. Structure of OAI and srsLTE
OAI is organized in accordance with the basic provisions of
the 3GPP protocol. The software contains two projects: radio
access network (RAN) and openair-cn with evolved packet
core (EPC), in which RAN mainly consists of three folders:
Openair1 realizes the PHY layer function of LTE, Openair2
mainly completes the function of layer 2 including MAC, Ra-
dio Link Control (RLC) and Packet Data Convergence Protocol
(PDCP) and Openair3 focuses on network layer and upper
layers.
srsLTE provides a wealth of LTE PHY library functions inc
luding the implementation of various physical channels and pro
cessing functions like ch_estimation, modem, dft etc. All the lib
raries are included in srslte. A couple of example applications a Process symbols 11,12 ,13 of last
re also implemented including cell_search, pdsch_enodebe / pd subframe and trigger DLSCH decoding
sch_ue, cell_measurement. Subframe n Subframe n+1

B. Analysis of PHY DL on OAI and srsLTE OFDM

symbol
0 4 7 11 12 13 0 4 7 11 12 13 ...
1) Algorithm Comparison
The key process of PHY layer DL on OAI and srsLTE is Slot0 Slot1 Slot0 Slot1
similar. UE first searches the center frequency, then performs Fig. 2. Procedure of Channel estimation in OAI.
cell search and downlink synchronization by decoding Primary
Sync Signal (PSS) and Secondary Sync Signal (SSS). After 2) PHY Channel Processing
that reference signal (RS) location is detected with cell ID. UE There are six PHY DL channels 错误!未找到引用源。
decodes Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH) to figure out Sys- and the processing flow of each PHY channel is almost the
tem Frame Number (SFN), System Bandwidth and Transmis- same as shown in Fig. 3 except that the modulation coding
sion Mode (TM) etc. Then UE detects Cell Specific Reference scheme (MCS) may be different. We focus on user data on
Signal (CSR) and performs channel estimation and equaliza- PDSCH to analyse some key procedures of srsLTE and OAI.
tion. After decoding Physical Control Format Indicator Chan-
nel (PCFICH) and Physical Downlink Control Channel Encoding Decoding
(PDCCH) to figure out the locations for Physical Downlink
Shared Channel (PDSCH) which is allocated for the UE, user
data on PDSCH is decoded finally.
Scrambling Descrambling
However, there are some differences in the specific imple-
mentation of above PHY DL procedures between OAI and
srsLTE. We summarize some of the distinctions in procedures
of PHY DL below. Modulation Demodulation

a) Synchronization
OAI UE will not continue to decode PSS and SSS after Pilot Channel
synchronizing with eNB. While srsLTE UE continues to per- Insertion Estimation
form synchronization maintenance after synchronization.
b) Frequency Offset Estimation
IFFT FFT
OAI uses frequency tracking synchronization algorithm
based on pilot signal to estimate fractional frequency offset in
the fourth OFDM symbol of each slot. In srsLTE, Maxi-
Transmitter Receiver
mumLikelihood (ML) algorithm based on Cyclic Prefix (CP) is
adopted to estimate fractional frequency offset, and integer
frequency offset estimation is carried out taking advantage of Fig. 3. Physical procedures.
orthogonality of PSS sequences in frequency domain.
The main functions for processing PDSCH corresponding
c) Time Offset Estimation to Fig. 3 in OAI and srsLTE are summarized in Table Ⅰ.
OAI uses channel impulse response to estimate time offset;
while srsLTE estimates the timing offset using PSS and SSS TABLE I FUNCTION NAME OF PHY DL IN OAI AND SRSLTE.
sequences.
PHY
d) Channel Estimation DL Functions
OAI srsLTE
For the sake of simplicity, UE of srsLTE and OAI both Encoding dlsch_encoding srslte_dlsch_encode
adopts Least-Squares (LS) algorithm and linear interpolation to Scrambling dlsch_scrambling srslte_scrambling_bytes
achieve channel estimation. srslte_mod_modulate_by
T Modulation dlsch_modulation
tes
X
However, there is a significant difference in the time inter- Pilot
generate_pilots_slot
srslte_refsignal_cs_put_s
polation of channel estimation between OAI and srsLTE. For a Insertion f
subframe in OAI, the channel estimation of OFDM symbol 12, IFFT do_OFDM_mod srslte_ofdm_tx_sf
FFT slot_fep srslte_ofdm_rx_sf
13 in current subframe is determined by the symbol 11 of cur-
Channel lte_dl_channel_estimat srslte_ue_dl_decode_esti
rent subframe and symbol 0 of the next subframe as shown in Estimation ion mate
Fig. 2. While in srsLTE, decoding the current subframe does R
srslte_demod_soft_demo
not require the next subframe to help. X Demodulation rx_pdsch
dulate s
Descrambling dlsch_unscrambling srslte_sequence_pdsch
Decoding dlsch_decoding srslte_dlsch_decode
 a) Transmitter
As shown in Fig. 3, for each subframe, a transport block eNB OAI PHY DL UE
firstly will be encoded to a codeword. The codeword is then USRP B210
USRP B210
scrambled and modulated using one of the modulation schemes
of QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM resulting in a block of complex-
valued modulation symbols and then mapped to resource ele-
ments. After pilot insertion, a codeword is transformed to
OFDM symbols. Now the data are ready to be transmitted in
RF front-end.
b) Receiver
On receiving link, FFT is firstly performed on each OFDM
symbol of received subframe. Then the UE of srsLTE and OAI
achieves channel estimation using LS as mentioned above.
Both srsLTE and OAI demodulate symbols using soft decision
decoding method based on log likelihood ratio (LLR) algo- srsLTE PHY DL
rithm. After demodulation, the data are descrambled and de- eNB UE
USRP B210 USRP B210
coded. In order to improve the execution speed of the program,
the SSE instruction set is adopted to complete the turbo decod-
ing function in OAI and srsLTE.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

In order to carry out the actual performance test of these
two SDR platforms, we have set up a LTE experimental
testbed using OAI and srsLTE with a USRP in the laboratory,
and conducted the performance study of PHY DL.
OAI and srsLTE are both free to download using the tool
Fig. 4. Experimental Environment.
git, which is a free distributed version control system. The ver-
sion may be updated. In our experiments, the version of OAI
we use is the master branch with the commit id 82e5410 and B. Experimental Scenario
the version of srsLTE is master branch with the commit id The experimental scenarios are deployed to measure the
fc3512d. maximum MCS and the peak throughput of LTE PHY DL on
OAI and srsLTE. We further evaluate execution time of key
A. System Configuration baseband processing modules using the function gettimeofday,
As illustrated in Fig. 4, the LTE experimental testbed con- and then perform a statistical comparison of memory usage of
sists of two general commodity PCs and two USRPs. The PCs LTE PHY DL on OAI and srsLTE using top, which is a com-
are of the similar configuration and we take the computer of mon memory analysis tool in Linux. The results are analyzed.
eNB as an example to illustrate the system configuration. The Key experimental parameters are summarized in the fol-
PC is equipped with Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU and four
lowing Table Ⅱ.
physical cores with the maximum clock frequency of CPU 3.4
GHz, which is powerful enough to satisfy the computational
requirement of LTE baseband process. The SSE and AVX in- TABLE II EXPENRIMENTAL PARAMETERS.
struction sets are supported for parallel computing. The 64-bit Parameter OAI srsLTE
Ubuntu 14.04 is installed in that it performs well in real-time. Duplex mode FDD FDD
System bandwidth 5 MHz / 10 MHz 5 MHz / 10 MHz
The USRP B210 is selected as the peripheral equipment
Transmission mode TM1 TM1
due to its superior performance in SDR platform. It supports DL carrier frequency 2.68 GHz (band7) 2.68 GHz (band7)
the sampling rate 61.44MHz which is a multiplier of all the UE RX gain 90 dB AGC
sampling rates defined in 3GPP LTE specifications. Besides it Distance
0.5 m 0.5 m
supports continuous frequency ranging from 70 MHz to 6 GHz between UE and eNB
and enables flexible RX gain adjustment, which is really im-
portant to received signal.
C. Results and Discussion
1) PHY DL Throughput
For the sake of accuracy, the average DL throughput of
OAI and srsLTE is measured within 10000 frames with the
system bandwidth set as 5 MHz and 10 MHz respectively. The
throughput at each MCS is shown in Fig. 5.
 From the results, we can conclude that the PHY DL of OAI
and srsLTE performs satisfactorily under the condition of 5
MHz and 10 MHz bandwidth. In the circumstances of 5 MHz
bandwidth, the PHY DL throughput of OAI and srsLTE is sim-
ilar to each other reaching the peak rate about 12 Mbps with
maximum MCS 27. While in the circumstance of 10 MHz,
srsLTE appears better in terms of stability, which reaches the
maximum MCS 27 with the peak rate 24.72 Mbps. The maxi-
mum MCS of OAI is 23 with the peak rate 20.34 Mbps in our
laboratory. In terms of CPU execution time, PHY modules in
srsLTE performs faster than OAI. In transmitter, modulate
costs most time, while in receiver, OFDM demodulate costs
more time. However, the baseband processing time is all in
microsecond level, which is much less than the Transmission
Time Interval (TTI) 1 ms in LTE so as to ensure the communi-
cation real-time quality. From the point of view of memory
Fig. 5. PHY DL throughput of OAI and srsLTE. occupation, OAI is more memory hungry compared with
srsLTE.
The maximum MCS and peak rate of OAI and srsLTE
PHY DL are recorded in Table Ⅲ. V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper, we review the current state of development of
TABLE III MAX MCS AND PEAK THROUGHPUT. GPP SDR and particularly introduce two famous GPP SDR
OAI srsLTE platforms, i.e. OAI and srsLTE. We have successfully set up
System the LTE SDR testbed using OAI and srsLTE comprising 1 UE
Peak rate Peak rate
Bandwidth MCS MCS
(Mbps) (Mbps) and 1 eNB in real-time radio frequency experimentation. The
5 MHz 27 12.6368 27 12.6603 throughput of PHY DL on OAI and srsLTE with different
10 MHz 23 20.3427 27 24.7209 bandwidths is measured. We also measure the CPU execution
time of some key modules and the memory usage of OAI and
2) CPU Execution Time srsLTE in PHY downlink. The result indicates that OAI and
We make a statistic of the CPU execution time of some srsLTE are both feasible and stable LTE platforms with excel-
PHY DL modules in transmitter and receiver. For simplicity lent real-time performance. As two famous open source GPP
and stability, we keep the MCS unchanged, i.e. 0. The result is SDR platforms, OAI and srsLTE can provide a convenient
shown in Table Ⅳ. development environment for researchers to validate new algo-
rithms and technologies in real-time in advance of designing
customized hardware. There are already a lot of projects based
TABLE IV CPU EXECUTION TIME.
on OAI, like NOMA [11] and multi-thread receiver [13] etc. It
CPU execution time OAI srsLTE further turns out that the GPP SDR has sufficient capacity to
Encoding 13 us 9 us handle high bandwidth traffic like LTE. It is envisioned that
Scrambling 11 us 8 us GPP SDR will play an irreplaceable role in the upcoming 5G
TX Modulate 56 us 22 us technology and we are getting closer to a larger scale adoption
OFDM modulate 23 us 14 us
of GPP SDR in commercial products.
In the near future, we plan to further study the new design
OFDM demodulate 23 us 15 us methods such as multi-thread parallel processing, multi-core
RX Demodulate 11 us 10 us processing on OAI and srsLTE to optimize performance of
Descrambling 9 us 3 us GPP SDR and implement new algorithms based on these two
Decoding 12 us 13 us platforms.

3) Memory Usage VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The memory usage of the OAI and srsLTE PHY DL is This work was supported by the Ministry of Education-
measured with MCS fixed as 0, which is shown in Table Ⅴ. China Mobile Research Funds under Grant MCM20160105,
the NSFC under the grant 61331009.
TABLE V MEMORY USAGE.
Memory
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