Does OpenBTS needs GNU Radio to work?

Question

I'm trying to deploy OpenBTS with USRP B100 using UHD. When I installed GNU Radio by apt-get it installed UHD as well, but when I tried to use uhd_usrp_probe to find my usrp it didn't work. Then I uninstalled uhd with the command: "apt-get purge uhd uhd*" and GNU Radio got removed too. After this I installed uhd by the command:

apt-get install -t 'lsb release-cs' uhd from the Ettus repositories and so UHD started to work properly. So I'm in doubt if I can go on the deploy without GNU Radio. So does OpenBTS needs GNU Radio to work?

Gaaa please format this better so that it is readable. Not that that will help, I suspect this will be off-topic in anycase — mjs, Feb 24 '15 at 21:29
Hi Emerson, you've got two answers by now -- has your problem been resolved? — Marcus Müller, Feb 27 '15 at 17:45
Yes, it was. i just really forgot to answer here. Thank you guys! — Emerson Oliveira, Apr 26 '15 at 23:09

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 25 '15 at 16:47

OpenBTS comes with a very complex build and installation system, which will install most of the components it needs itself.

Your Distro's GNU Radio will not be required. Also, now that you use the correct (new) version of UHD, GNU Radio would have to be built and linked against exactly that version of UHD (and not the one that the Distro was using when it built GNU Radio).

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 26 '15 at 16:11

So to answer the question you ask in the last sentence: "does OpenBTS need GNURadio to work" - the answer is no. Modern OpenBTS can use UHD directly to talk to various USRP's (including the B100), and does not require GNURadio.

To provide some historical context here: OpenBTS was never built to use GNURadio for any of the signal processing portions of its internals, however, back in the day OpenBTS relied on the libusrp1/libusrp2 libraries that were present within the GNURadio repository to talk to USRP1's and USRP2's respectively. I believe this mechanism is still supported within OpenBTS, however libusrp1/libusrp2 no longer exist in modern releases of GNURadio. In addition, they can not be used to control a B100 (libusrp1 only supports the USRP1, and libusrp2 only supports the USRP2, both products that are considered rather old at this point, and the USRP2 in particular is no longer sold). Point being, the only way OpenBTS can use GNURadio is with a very old release of GNURadio (i.e. one unlikely to be installed in any modern distribution). And more to the point, it would not use GNURadio to talk to a B100.

Does OpenBTS needs GNU Radio to work?

2 Answers2