11 ms·
A 4G LTE base station running entirely in software on a standard PC
- nathell 14y agoFabrice Bellard is one of the guys I dream of one day achieving the level of productivity of.
- trigger 14y agoProductivity and sheer balls. My on-the-side projects are pathetic compared to what this guy does. Even a quick glance at one of those LTE specs is enough to scare me a million miles away from a project like this.
- 3amOpsGuy 14y agoWow, it's from Fabrice Bellard of QEMU and ffmpeg fame, excellent.
- bochi 14y agoFabrice Bellard a genius: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- hbbio 14y agoNot only that, but jslinux, qemacs, tcc. All by himself. He might be THE best software developer on earth!
- ra 14y agoYes, a seriously impressive man.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- wbhart 14y agoDon't forget the singlehanded pi computation record. This guy is a serious heavyweight.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kamaal 14y agoAnd also don't forget he is just 40!
- thibaut_barrere 14y agoAnd that he coded LZEXE at 17 :)
- necrodome 14y agoA nice blog post about him: http://blog.smartbear.com/software-quality/bid/167059/ http://blog.smartbear.com/software-quality/bid/167059/
- sandGorgon 14y agoI wonder why this was not developed/contributed to the GNU Radio toolkit (http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki) .
- heretohelp 14y agoBecause it's Fabrice Bellard. Look at his ouerve, he doesn't bother integrating any of his projects into anything else, or put more charitably, dance to the politics of other peoples' projects. I don't blame him. Contributing to GNU projects as an outsider is a PITA.
- beagle3 14y agoIt's more than that, I think: I've worked with people of his caliber in other fields, and I can appreciate that they need to work at their own pace. e.g., if he submitted QEMU as a patch for bochs, and it was rejected (for whatever reason), does anyone think his time was better spent fixing that patch? He produces ingenious, high quality code, and does so at an unbelievable rate (note, none of his open source projects is related to his day job as far as I can tell - except perhaps the ASN 1 compiler). I think he is arguably optimizing his contribution to society, and I hope he keeps doing that. Let people who can't produce the core do all the integration/politics/detail stuff.
- lazyjones 14y agoWhat does he do for a living? I can't find anything about it on the wikipedia page, his personal page and the blog page about his achievements - strange.
- kamaal 14y agoI think he works for some big corporate. Which one I don't know. I remember reading about it in some HN thread.
- 14y ago
- willvarfar 14y agoVery neat. Shame that 'interested companies can contact me'. Would be fun to know how such base-stations - when attached to antenna - can be used to spoof things and perform attacks. Lets hope that comes up at some blackhat conference soon...
- zvikara 14y agoFabrice has contributed to opensource more than almost anybody here. Absolutely no shame if he prefer to keep the source closed this time.
- jeormormont 14y agoI think perhaps you've missed the point of free and open source software.
- wr1472 14y ago"...of free and open source software." Not everything you write has to be free and open source.
- RachelF 14y agoYes, it is a big shame that this is not open source. I wonder how much he plans on making from this?
- wr1472 14y agoI hope he makes a shed-load from this. I wouldn't begrudge him any of it, given his contributions to the software community to date.
- axusgrad 14y agoPerhaps it is GPL license AND commercial software.
- kamaal 14y agoWhy shouldn't he make money out of this? Good developer != ready to work for peanuts.
- mtdev 14y agoNeat, however, software for base station are not provided and interested companies can contact the site owner. Pretty cool that this is allegedly running on a software defined radio kit which can be had for only ~$2000 (a bargain).
- bostonvaulter2 14y agoIs there a reason that this Low-Cost software defined radio wouldn't work ($30)? http://www.amazon.com/Newsky-Receiver-Low-Cost-Software-Defined/dp/B008DCBS94/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346664377&sr=8-1&keywords=software+defined+radio http://www.amazon.com/Newsky-Receiver-Low-Cost-Software-Defi...
- henriks 14y agoreceiver only?
- bigiain 14y agoIt's only a receiver. You'll need a transmit capable radio to do everything this does.
- xradionut 14y agoBecause you are comparing two different categories of radios. There is a big difference between a very cheap receiver and a high quality, wide bandwidth, customizable transceiver. A bad automobile analogy would be a Yugo vs Peterbilt.
- mjwalshe 14y agoAnd I suspect that they wont sell this kit to civilains (subs) as you need to have a licence for those 4g bands - if your lucky there might be an exception for low power expeimental licences for bone fide reserchers but I would not hold my breath
- ssdsa 14y agoCool, it's from the same author (Fabrice Bellard) who coded the PC emulator in Javascript: http://bellard.org/jslinux/ http://bellard.org/jslinux/ ("How much time takes your browser to boot Linux?")
- sargun 14y agoFabrice Bellard is to the FLOSS world, as Elon Musk is the entrepreneurship.
- bonaldi 14y agoIs it possible to do something similar for 2G/3g?
- muzaffarfh 14y agoThere is an existing project called OpenBTS, http://wush.net/trac/rangepublic http://wush.net/trac/rangepublic
- asg 14y agoI was pleasantly surprised to see the LTE specs are freely available. Large consortium specs of this nature seem to be quite expensive. (cf: http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store.htm http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store.htm) Wonder what the patent licence situation is with the LTE specs?
- mindjiver 14y agoLTE (as with most 3GPP specs) are heavily patented. All patents are available under FRAND licenses however.
- cma 14y agoSoftware isn't patentable in the EU, and this is a software radio implementation...
- wmf 14y agoInteresting concept. So if someone has a "hardware" patent and you manage to implement a software "emulation" of that hardware (that nevertheless runs at full speed) then you don't have to pay? (Reminds me of Transmeta...)
- mindjiver 14y agoThere is still a physical RF layer (which is not software) and then you need antennas where you most likely end up in more patents.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoSoftware that has no 'technical effect' (though details of the specific test have changed a few times) are not allowed. Many many valid [in respect of patentability of the subject invention at least] software patents have been grantd by the EPO and EPC member nations. Because business methods aren't patentable in Europe many USPTO granted patents have no technical contribution that is not excluded from patentability. tl;dr, it's complicated but your statement is false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Euro...
- agumonkey 14y agoThe higher the genius, the simpler the webpage.
- kamaal 14y agoBjarne Stroustrup says about this too. Also have a look at Larry Wall's web page: http://www.wall.org/~larry/ http://www.wall.org/~larry/
- agumonkey 14y agoMy favorite example is http://okmij.org/ftp/ http://okmij.org/ftp/ Quite beautiful.
- scott_karana 14y agoAgreed, but something about his top navigation bar made my "Google Adwords Section, Ignore This" heuristic go off.
- agumonkey 14y agoNow that you mention it..
- LVB 14y agoKnuth: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/ http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/
- dchest 14y agodjb: http://cr.yp.to http://cr.yp.to
- tobiasu 14y agoActual hacker news on Hacker News!
- przemoc 14y agoSo true and so sad! Indeed, pretty rare thing here.
- wbhart 14y agoI like the model Fabrice uses. He picks really meaty, technical projects which most individuals would not attempt alone, if they even think the project is possible. And he comes up with the goods. It would be interesting to know if this model works... umm financially. Very tempting to give it a try if it does.
- 4bpp 14y agoThe reason the average HN-goer never does anything of note is precisely because of being driven by this "how can I monetize this" mentality alone.
- prodigal_erik 14y agoGetting paid is a proxy for doing something society actually wants (rather than paying lip service to) and brings the resources to make it self-sustaining. I'm torn because I find society's wants (at least around my calling) to be largely fickle and shallow, but if I disregard them it's mere self-gratification.
- ballooney 14y agoI'm pretty sure that the market would support televised gladiatorial combat, but then you remember ethics. And if you'll allow ethics, why not also allow other considerations than purely what will make you money? Rachmaninov could have just written vaudeville tunes and radio advert jingles for lots more money, but we'd have not have heard of him today if he had. Was he merely self-gratifying, or are there more dimensions, other than what will make you richest precisely right now, in this 'worthiness' space within which you're maxima-finding?
- swalsh 14y agoThis is cool, but I would assume he's violating any number of patents in order for it to work properly. (perhaps that's why it's closed source?)
- guard-of-terra 14y agoI don't think it's the main reason. If he really wanted to open source it he could do it anyway. What can the respective patent holders do? "Bring it on", get bad press, no money (assuming he doesn't make any off this) and Streisand effect. Assuming he does want to make money off this, it makes sense to hold source (or indeed the whole prototype) closed for many reasons.
- noonespecial 14y agoYou can't 'hello world' without that being true these days.
- cma 14y agoSoftware isn't patentable in the EU.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoYou're wrong http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Euro....
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoUnless he's using the patented inventions commercially then he's fine. Note that free-gratis distribution can be a commercial use.
- pagejim 14y agoWonder how RealTime it is? Encoding/Decoding of data/signal as per LTE specs is a multi-step process with lots of maths intensive operations. Normally, custom made Baseband DSP processors are used for this kind of stuff which contain special HW Accelerators for this kind of intensive computing. Would be really interesting to see how he has implemented it and how practical is it.
- jlouis 14y agoHad it been somebody else, I would have pondered on the truth of the claim. But Mr. Bellard... that is another thing entirely. My guess is that he does have certain limitations, for instance the amount of connections he can manage and so on. But I do think modern hardware can be made to perform well if you know what you are doing. There are many ways to generally implement the DSPs on a modern PC that would be fast enough. Also, a guess is that one of the reasons DSPs are preferred is that they have a better power profile. You don't need that for testing purposes. All in all, I think it is a great project.
- laclac 14y agoIt uses a USRP N210 (https://www.ettus.com/product/details/UN210-KIT https://www.ettus.com/product/details/UN210-KIT) which has an FPGA that is most likely used for the signal processing. However, quite a lot can be done on a standard PC these days with SSE or GPGPU programming.
- OllieJones 14y agoCool! The wall around another walled garden starts to crumble! How many years before the carriers themselves start using open source code in their infrastructure because it's more reliable and robust?
- sbierwagen 14y agoThis particular garden has legal walls: 4G radio frequencies are licensed. Transmitting on them without a license can (depending on circumstances) result in jail time.
- sp332 14y agoI wonder if this could easily be combined with the recent hacker cell networks, like ShadyTel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF4NjbIEbW8#t=64s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF4NjbIEbW8#t=64s and NinjaTel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r83PKVXJ_K0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r83PKVXJ_K0
- ippisl 14y agoWhile it's a big technical achievement, in a world when companies are talking about 4G LTE bill of materials of $50 [1] for a picostation(roughly 20mhz) and vodaphone setting targets for $100(my guess for a full device) , where does this fit in ? [1]http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/09/07/picochip-femtocell-bom-50.htm http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2010/09/07/picochip-femtocel...
- konstruktor 14y agoThis aligns very well with the values of hacker culture: learning, exploration and enabling others to do the same.
- vidarh 14y agoAs a development platform for companies that want to experiment with new features prior to committing to design ASICs to support them, for example.
- sp332 14y agoMaybe just for hackability? http://info.yawp.com/blog/2010/09/open-hardware-thoughts/ http://info.yawp.com/blog/2010/09/open-hardware-thoughts/
- mhd 14y agoConsidering that this is from Fabrice Bellard, I actually was quite disappointed that this isn't really software-only, i.e. uses the side effect radio waves generated by some standard hardware to do it. Talk about high expectations…
- jwcacces 14y agoFabrice?
- mhd 14y agoDamn these German sausage fingers!
- claudeshannon 14y agoNot sure what your comment means. Did you want a software EM field?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mhd 14y agoI was referring to http://bellard.org/dvbt/ http://bellard.org/dvbt/
- elteto 14y agoYou can't generate an electromagnetic field just from software!! At some point you need a physical medium to accomplish that. In the case you point out he uses the DAC hardware on a graphics card to generate electric signals, controlled by software. Not really sure what you meant.
- marshray 14y agoThat's like saying "you can't calculate pi just from software". We're willing to presume the presence of some type of general-purpose hardware when we talk about software. Some of his projects require only the use of commodity hardware of the type sold at Walmart. That's categorically different than something that requires a custom built software defined radio transceiver. That said, this project looks pretty cool.
- Jemm 14y agoAs cool as this is, the title is a bit misleading. This setup requires a "low cost software radio frontend" costing about $2000 and the author is using a high end i7 processor. Still a very cool use of SDR and probably considerably cheaper than the alternatives.
- frankydp 14y ago$2k is exceedingly cheap in the cellular space I would guess. So, the title would only be misleading out of context, in which Fabrice assumes you will find your own context, because he is to busy saving the world with code. Also agree this is very cool use of SoftRadio.
- rsync 14y agoExactly. Go on ebay and search for "3g base station" or "cdma test" and so on ... low to mid 5-digit price tags for old equipment. Even the iden bases (nextel, etc.) are still fairly expensive...
- superuser2 14y agoI thought the frequencies necessary for LTE in the US are licensed exclusively to carriers? Or does LTE tolerate different networks on the same frequency?
- claudeshannon 14y agoYou're right. This would be in violation of FCC regulation as it would interfere with a pre-existing network at 2600 MHz.
- nolok 14y agoThe guys is french living in France for a french company. I doubt he cares about FCC regulations.
- sbierwagen 14y agoFrance also, you will be unsurprised to hear, has cell phones, and laws regarding them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicatio...
- a-priori 14y agoThey are, which makes the carriers "primary users" of those bands. As an unlicensed user, you may still legally transmit on these bands as long as your transmissions are limited to a small range and do not interfere with a primary user's use. This means that you must transmit at a low power, but exactly how low depends on the band.
- wmf 14y agoFabrice Bellard is in France AFAIK (not that it really makes any difference). Who says the carriers and their suppliers aren't his target customers? It is also possible to do some experimentation without a license.
- kamaal 14y agoI always think how these hackers manage to do it. If you look at the projects in his homepage they vary across domains. How do they manage to stay motivated, how do they learn all the stuff they do. And if I'm not wrong they do this apart from their day jobs. Projects on his page are inspiring.
- agumonkey 14y agoHe's a polymath. Smart enough to understand any domain. If not I'd be interested in what subjects he struggles with.
- hobbyist 14y agoNo doubt he is a genius, but what has made him excel is discipline. Try to look at the documentation of the tools that he created for this project, you will understand what I mean :)
- dicroce 14y agoFabrice Bellard is one of my programming hero's. 1) FFMPEG 2) TinyCC 3) jslinux
- hobbyist 14y agoAs the documentation says, all the processing from physical to protocol layers is done by the PC. Could anyone experienced in wireless technologies explain what is the software radio frontend worth 2000$ actually doing?
- wmf 14y agoA USRP costs almost $2,000 because it is completely general-purpose, modular, and customizable. It's more flexible than you really need, but if you're doing a one-off project it's cheaper than designing a custom radio.
- hobbyist 14y agoso right now the only use of it is to get the raw packets from ethernet, convert to analog with required power and just release it over the metal? I may be wrong here.. not an RF expert
- ajays 14y agoI'm clueless about the underlying legalities/politics, so was wondering: could something like this be used to provide connectivity in an area without 4G (but with an Internet connection)? In other words, could I (an average Joe) set up my own "cellular hot spot" and offer a better quality signal to people in the neighborhood?
- wmf 14y agoBasically no. All the spectrum that phones can use is already owned by various companies.
- smartkids 14y agore: his appeal to "interested corporations" Does he need money? One would think he probably has a pretty good day job already. But if he really needed it in order to continue writing software, I would bet many people would be willing to contribute to a "Bellard Writing Fund". His contributions to open source are really in a class by themselves.
- sbierwagen 14y agoIndividual persons can't deploy their own LTE base stations, unless they've got a couple million in their pocket for the radio frequency licenses. The only way this will be available to the consumer is if a telco produces it.
- smartkids 14y agoThank you. I knew there must be a reasonable explanation.
- DigitalSea 14y agoFabrice Bellard is a genius. Seriously, this guy may just be one of the, if not the best software developers around. The very fact Bellard seems to like tackling heavily technical challenges and sharing his findings is why he's the great developer he is. This is impressive.
- st3fan 14y agoThis would be more interesting if it were an open source project.
- hobbyist 14y agoI have a question here.. No one doubts the genius of fabrice bellard.. Someone in the thread rightly commented him as a polymath.. Fabrice sticks to C and loves the language to the core.. I often hear the FP folks saying that ppl who are inclined towards math love to program in lisp/scheme/haskell/clojure.. Fabrice Bellard being a math genius has no project written in any of these languages.. Why so? I understand it is personal taste but there got to be deep reason also
- marshray 14y agoSeveral of his projects show he has an affection for applied number crunching and low-level programming. C lives right at the intersection of these domains.
- peterhajas 14y agoFabrice Bellard does it again.