Releases and Roadmap

In November 2009 we showed a first demonstration of OpenEPC at 5th FOKUS IMS Workshop 2009 and have worked since then on refining many aspects of the software. An aggressive roadmap was put in place which targets major releases every year with new feature previews every 3 months.

• April 2010: Rel. 1 of OpenEPC was launched with support for mobility management and roaming configuration support and support for subscription management and policy control.

• February 2011: Rel. 2 of OpenEPC includes the core network for LTE access (eNodeB emulation and MME) and new updates on the mobility management, subscription management and other usability features

• January 2011: Rel.3 of OpenEPC contains all the components of the EPC, by adding the AAA functionality for non-3GPP access, the 2G/3G SGSN, offline charging functionality and other extensions such as flexible user plane and overhaul of the UE functionality

• October 2011: Rel. 4 of OpenEPC is planned to include the integration with off-the-shelf 2G and 3G femtocells and LTE radio integration

Upon customer request, currently missing functionality of Rel. 3 can be added in a prioritized manner, including distributed network architectures, self-organizing network features, support for M2M communication and for novel wireless adapted services.

OpenEPC Rel. 3 Features (short summary)

• Core Network Support for UMTS including:

  • SGSN component

  • SGSN interfaces towards the core network (S4, S12 and S6d)

  • 2G/3G access emulation (without radio technology)

• Converged Charging Control through Offline Charging System including:

  • Event and volume based charging for bearers, sessions or applications

  • Charging Data Function and Charging Gateway Function Converged simple Billing Function (BF)

  • Correlation of charging information with service platforms i.e. IMS

• Non-3GPP AAA Functionality

  • Authentication and authorization for non-3GPP accesses

  • AAA server and the correspondent interfaces (SWx, SWa, STa, SWm, S6b)

  • RADIUS authentication server integration

  • Support for EAP-AKA and EAP-AKA'

• Other features

  • Support for flexible selection of control and user-plane entities

  • New flexible user-plane path entities

  • X2 extensions of the LTE core network

  • Overhaul of the UE functionality

OpenEPC Rel. 2 Features (short summary)

• Core Network Support for LTE access including:
  • eNodeB emulation and MME function including the S6a, S11, S1-MME and S1-U interfaces
  • Extension of the S-GW to integrate the LTE access
  • GTPv2 protocol stack
• Extensions to core network mobility management:
  • Truly seamless handovers support in the PDN GW
  • IP Mobility Management selection between GTP and PMIP
  • Optimized attachments through OpenEPC extended DHCP protocol (EHCP)\
• New OpenEPC enablers:
  • IP Flow View core network visualization tool

OpenEPC Rel. 1 Features (short summary)

• Core network mobility and transparent vertical handover support using:
  • OpenEPC Proxy MobileIP in access network specific gateways (S-GW, ePDG) and PDN GW
  • Integration with public available DHCP servers
  • Dynamic IP address allocation in PDN GW
• Automatic client mobility management through:
  • OpenEPC ANDSF communicating with OpenEPC HSS
  • Mobility Manager of the mobile devices communicating with OpenEPC ANDSF and orchestrating the link and network layer operations for the transparent handovers
• PCC control only policy based mechanisms including:
  • PCRF policy based functionality including the Rx, Gx, Gxx and Sp communicating interfaces
  • PCEF integrated with the core network mobility management in the PDN GW
  • BBERF integrated with the core network mobility management in the S-GW and ePDG
• AAA functionality through:
  • HSS common for the Open IMS Core and OpenEPC acting as SPR for the PCC and integrated with the HSS
• OpenEPC enablers such as:
  • Video Streaming Application Function - including Rx communication and adaptable video streaming
  • HTTP interceptor
  • Fraunhofer FOKUS Open IMS Core