OpenEPC for Research and Development

The OpenEPC toolkit addresses to both academia and industry partners which require testbed deployments for prototyping new network features and applications for the emerging all-IP broadband mobile networks with the EPC architecture and as joint projects with Fraunhofer FOKUS for short and long perspective research following the 3GPP standardization issues and the new approaches considered by the research community.

OpenEPC enables a quick start for prototyping new core network functionality and applications designed for the emerging all-IP broadband mobile networks with the EPC architecture. The software offers:

• Easy development: The implemented OpenEPC functionality follows the standard 3GPP Release 9 and is available for licensing with its entire source code. Although developed components were inspired by the current standards, several FOKUS optimizations for operation in all-IP environments were also introduced. Being an independent R&D organization without the goal of commercial deployments, we put a focus on adding also new concepts and functionality that are currently not already realized within the standards. Yet, as the OpenEPC brings together more than 10 different components, its complexity should not be underestimated. When licensing the components fully featured configuration and provisioning data as well as an installation and how-to guides up to source code documentation will be provided. This should allow for an easy learning curve even without having any previous EPC knowledge.

• Configurability: OpenEPC can be provided, deployed and configured to match the needs for testing only some components or use cases. As an example, all interfaces are both IPv4 and IPv6 ready and can be provisioned as required.

• Extensibility: adding new functionality whether new mobility schemes or policy and charging contol protocols or other features to the components is as easy as it gets with the modular OpenEPC architecture.

Functional testing, conformance testing or interoperability tests of individual or multiple components can be done using OpenEPC.

OpenEPC can be used by connecting your access network setup and Service Delivery Platforms e.g. for IMS, advanced Internet applications or other. For demonstration purposes, we also provide applications such as the Open IMS Core (www.openimscore.org) and clients such as the myMONSTER Telco Communicator Suite (www.mymonster.org) to equip you with an operational testbed speeding up your research and development activities. However, through an OpenEPC testbed common Over-The-Top IP applications can also be easily showcased.

Latest publications related to the OpenEPC project

Corici M., Fiedler J., Vingarzan D., Magedanz T., “Optimized Low Mobility Support in Massive Mobile Broadband Evolved Packet Core Architecture”, 17th IEEE International Conference on Networks (ICON) 2011, accepted for publication, 14-16 December 2011, Singapore.

Corici M., Fiedler J., Magedanz T., Vingarzan D., “Evolution of the Resource Reservation Mechanisms for Machine Type Communication Over Mobile Broadband Evolved Packet Core Architecture”, IEEE Workshop on Multimedia Communications (MMCOM) 2011, accepted for publication, 5-9 December 2011, Huston, USA.

Mueller J., Magedanz T., Corici M., Vingarzan D., 'UE & Network Initiated QoS Reservation in NGN and Beyond', Network of the Future (NOF), 2011 International Conference on the Future Internet, Issue Date:  28-30 Nov. 2011, On page(s): 62 - 67, Print ISBN: 978-1-4577-1605-8, DOI:  10.1109/NOF.2011.6126684Paris, France, 28-30 Nov. 2011, http://www.network-of-the-future.org/, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6126684

Marius Corici, Andreea Onofrei, Vingarzan, Dragos, Julius Mueller, Magedanz, Thomas, “Massive Deployment of Small Coverage Area Cells in the all-IP Wireless System”, ITU Telecom World 11, accepted for publication, Geneva 24-27 October 2011.

Marius Corici, Jens Fiedler, Thomas Magedanz and Dragos Vingarzan, “Access Network Discovery and Selection in the Future Broadband Wireless Environment”, Mobile Wireless Middleware, Operating Systems, and Applications Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2010, Volume 48, Part 2, 70-83, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-17758-3_6.

Corici M., Fiedler J., Onofrei A., Vingarzan D., “Enabling Dynamic Service Delivery in the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core”, IEEE Globecom 2010 - Workshop on Advances in Communication and Networks, 6 Dec. 2010, Miami, USA.

Corici M., Magedanz T., Vingarzan D., Weik P., „Enabling Ambient Aware Service Delivery in Heterogeneous Wireless Environments”,  IEEE Globecom 2010 - Communications Software, Services and Multimedia Applications Symposium - Next Generation Services and Service Platforms, GLOBECOM 2010, 2010 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference , vol., no., pp.1-6, 6-10 Dec. 2010, doi: 10.1109/GLOCOM.2010.5683952 URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5683952&isnumber=5683069.

Corici M., Magedanz T., Vingarzan D., Pampu C., Zhou Q., „Access Network Reselection based on Momentary Resources in a Converged Wireless Environment”, IEEE Globecom 2010 - Next Generation Networking Symposium - IEEE Globecom 2010 - Next Generation Networking Symposium , vol., no., pp.1-6, 6-10 Dec. 2010, doi: 10.1109/GLOCOM.2010.5684363, URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5684363&isnumber=5683069.

Corici M., Magedanz T., Vingarzan D., Weik P., „Prototyping Mobile Broadband Applications with the Open Evolved Packet Core”, 2010 14th International Conference on Intelligence in Next Generation Networks (ICIN) - Weaving Applications into the Network Fabric,  Berlin, Germany, Seitenzahlen: Information Not Available, Verlag/Herausgeber: IEEE Xplore, E-ISBN:  978-1-4244-7444-8, Print ISBN: 978-1-4244-7443-1 INSPEC Accession Number: 11662579, Digital Object Identifier :  10.1109/ICIN.2010.5640902, 18 November 2010, Erscheinungsort: New York, USA.

Corici M., Magedanz T., Vingarzan D., Pampu C., Zhou Q., "Proactive Vertical Handover Optimizations in the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core”, Second International ICST Conference on Mobile Networks and Management, Santander, Spain, Sept. 2010; E-ISBN: 978-963-995-16-1, pp 1-5.