Author Topic: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network  (Read 19758 times)

Odiebla

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YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« on: December 05, 2014, 11:34:42 AM »
Hi All,

I've just received my bladeRF and started to dig into YateBTS. I've installed a fresh Ubuntu 14.4 virtual machine in Parallels on my Macbook Pro (Yosemite, HiSpeed USB) and did all the stuff described in the 'Installing' and 'Prerequisities' documents on the YateBTS wiki. I've managed to compile and install all the stuff and after doing some initial ybts.conf configging (Dect Guard Band, 1800, C0=885) etc I started Yate.

To me it seems yate is happy, from yate.log:

2014-12-05_13:20:31.427385 <mbts:NOTE> OpenBTS.cpp:144:startTransceiver: starting transceiver ./transceiver-bladerf w/ 1 ARFCNs and Args:
2014-12-05_13:20:31.464126 <transceiver:NOTE> bladeRFDevice.cpp:106:open: Opened bladeRF serial=85e00e879fc8e68e522abddc7fa33138 firmware version 1.8.0 (1.8.0)
2014-12-05_13:20:31.889110 <transceiver:NOTE> Transceiver.cpp:68:Transceiver: running 1 ARFCNs with oversampling 4
Starting transceiver
2014-12-05_13:20:36.462267 <transceiver:NOTE> bladeRFDevice.cpp:239:start: starting bladeRF in high speed mode...

The bladeRF blade has blinking LED1 and LED3, afaik indicating it's TXing and RXing. But whatever I do, I see no network on my testphones (iphone6 and Nexus5).

What puzzles me is I see a lot of:

2014-12-05_16:32:59.357833 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 2955547385072757 at 619417 in buffer 3/4
2014-12-05_16:32:59.357849 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 2533334919908217 at 619669 in buffer 0/2
2014-12-05_16:32:59.357868 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 2533334920006269 at 619921 in buffer 1/2
2014-12-05_16:32:59.358887 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 2533334920006016 at 620173 in buffer 0/4
2014-12-05_16:32:59.359125 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 2674072408361092 at 620425 in buffer 1/4
2014-12-05_16:32:59.359158 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 1970382818969481 at 620677 in buffer 2/4
2014-12-05_16:32:59.359183 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 2674072408295052 at 620929 in buffer 3/4
2014-12-05_16:32:59.359206 <transceiver:MILD> bladeRFDevice.cpp:489:readSamples: RX Timestamp jumped by 2392593136616848 at 621181 in buffer 0/4

I'm not sure, but to me it seems the software is not receiving all stuff (in time), maybe due to USB2?

Any fingerpoints are appreciated. What is needed to make sure the bladeRF is correctly transmitting and is visible for a mobile station?

habibur333

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2014, 02:27:45 AM »
please see the update
hi  Odiebela ,
may be u have something like this on our log file

ALERT 140371742193536 07:20:27.7 TRXManager.cpp:430:powerOff: POWEROFF failed with status -1
2014-12-11_07:20:27.721808 <mbts:NOTE> TRXManager.cpp:293:sendCommandPacket: lost control link to transceiver
2014-12-11_07:20:27.722302 <mbts:WARN> TRXManager.cpp:430:powerOff: POWEROFF failed with status -1
2014-12-11_07:20:27.789979 <mbts:NOTE> OpenBTS.cpp:144:startTransceiver: starting transceiver ./transceiver-bladerf w/ 1 ARFCNs and Args:
2014-12-11_07:20:28.403054 <transceiver:NOTE> bladeRFDevice.cpp:106:open: Opened bladeRF serial=bf922ab76ae11915ff145093139e3eb7 firmware version$
2014-12-11_07:20:29.021937 <transceiver:NOTE> Transceiver.cpp:68:Transceiver: running 1 ARFCNs with oversampling 4

if it occure first of all you have to solve the power off problem. thanks

update: its not a problem. its only a warning and there is no effect of this warning. i run two bladerf and both has same warning but fully operational.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2015, 12:32:39 PM by habibur333 »

Odiebla

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2014, 09:59:56 AM »
Yes, I see the same but after that it seems that the radio is up & running. What does the poweroff fault mean and what is causing it?


paulc

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2014, 08:55:04 AM »
This looks like a YateBTS / libbladeRF / firmware / FPGA incompatibility.

The bladeRF API is unstable and has changed several times. The structure of the data buffers (controlled by FPGA) and of the control code (Cypress firmware) has also changed.

Please use libbladeRF from http://repo.yatebts.com/devel/bladeRF.tar.gz and flash the board with the firmware.img from our SVN directory mbts/TransceiverRAD1. You will need to rebuild YateBTS after installing libbladeRF so it picks the corect API.

habibur333

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2014, 08:58:45 AM »
Hi Odiebla
You may try this
http://nuand.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3665
if it work please inform me.

jynik

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2015, 07:34:33 AM »
Hi there,

I just wanted to second Habibur's suggestion of applying the patch to the transceiver code, for reasons I briefly explained in that thread and will try to summarize below.

This patch simply moves some manual enabling of FPGA timestamp functionality to after a bladerf_sync_config() call.  This is required because timestamp support was officially introduced in libbladeRF v0.17.0 via the BLADERF_FORMAT_SC16_Q11_META format.  As of libbladeRF v0.17.0, specifying the BLADERF_FORMAT_SC16_Q11 format indicates one does not want metadata so it turns it off. (So what you're seeing in those error messages is IQ data being interpreted as timestamps.) Credit goes out to mambrus for pinpointing and reporting this

I sincerely apologize for the confusion caused by the API changes in the unstable libbladeRF v0.x.x series, and more recently, this issue caused by the underlying differences between metadata/non-metadata format specifiers. For what it's worth, on the bladeRF side of things, the aforementioned timestamp change should be the last of the reverse-incompatible changes.  The recent v1.x.x libbladeRF series (From November 2014) is intended to provide stability and maintain backwards compatibility within that v1.x.x series; increments major version shall denote reverse-incompatible API changes (which there are no remaining plans to introduce).

We bladeRF folks intend to keep our top-level CHANGELOG updated with the latest set of compatible versions.

With that said, as paulc noted, using an older libbladeRF version (earlier than v0.17.0) with the appropriately matched FX3 firmware and FPGA should also work. Unless you want to be using bleeding edge fixes it would probably be best to stick to libbladeRF, FX3 firmware, and FPGA image versions recommended by the Yate team, considering that they would have tested and verified a certain set of versions.

Hope that helps rather than causing you further confusion,
Jon
« Last Edit: January 10, 2015, 07:41:24 AM by jynik »

habibur333

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #6 on: January 10, 2015, 12:31:12 PM »
hi

on fresh ubuntu 14.04 i tried paulc method (in this thread) . it also worked. in this case no need of patch but have to change the bladerf lib and firmware also. may be this firmware and lib is old version.thanks
« Last Edit: January 10, 2015, 12:33:07 PM by habibur333 »

jynik

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #7 on: January 10, 2015, 02:54:05 PM »
Hi Habibur,

Yes, you're correct.  No patch is required when following paulc's instructions because the libbladeRF version he linked to is v0.14.0.  The introduction of timestamp support into the libbladeRF API was added in v0.17.0 (which does so in a manner that necessitates that patch). In short, the patch is only needed when using YateBTS with libbladeRF v0.17.0 or newer.

If you ever run into what you believe is a bug in libbladeRF when using that older version, please be sure to check for any thing already addressed by fixes added after that v0.14.0 release.

Cheers,
Jon

habibur333

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Re: YateBTS with bladeRF x40 : no visible network
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2015, 03:18:08 AM »
ya  jynik

i believe your last comment will be very helpful for yatebts user through BladeRF device. may be the lib version of bladerf  is now more specify.Thanks