LTE-EPC Network Simulator (LENA)
Contents |
News
- 2013-04-30 LENA M6 release
- 2013-04-12 LENA M5 merged with ns-3-dev
- 2013-01-23 LENA M5 release
- 2012-05-11 LENA M4 merged with ns-3-dev
- 2011-12-15 LENA M4 release
- 2011-06-17 LENA M1 release
- 2011-03-10 First public release of the LENA project
- 2011-02-02 Press Release: Ubiquisys and CTTC Develop World’s First Open Source Product-Oriented LTE Network Simulator
Overview
Ubiquisys, the developer of intelligent cells, and the Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), the leading research organization in communication technologies, are working together to develop the world’s first open source product-oriented LTE network simulator.
The simulator will provide a common platform for LTE femto vendors and LTE macro vendors to evaluate their different solutions. The advantage for operators is that they can be sure that large and small cells from different vendors will work harmoniously before they are deployed.
In WCDMA networks, femtocells and macro cells work independently, but in LTE all cells work together as a single SON. This means that the adaptive behaviour of femtocells and macro cells is interdependent.
Simulators are important because they can evaluate product behaviour in a mature, densely deployed and heavily used network, at a time when real deployments are in their infancy. Ubiquisys made extensive use of a WCDMA network simulator during the development of its first generation of intelligent femtocells.
The open source LTE simulator is based on the popular ns-3 network simulator for internet systems. The development of the LTE simulator is open to the community in order to foster early adoption and contributions by industrial and academic partners.
Development
Source Code Repositories
The stable version of the LENA code has been merged with the official development version of ns-3 and is therefore available at http://code.nsnam.org/ns-3-dev/
The development version of the LENA code is available at http://lena.cttc.es/hg/lena/
You can download the latest development code using this command:
hg clone http://lena.cttc.es/hg/lena/
Model Documentation
The LTE-EPC model developed within the LENA project comes with the following documentation:
- design documentation
- user documentation
- testing documentation
- profiling documentation
This documentation is available both in html format and in pdf format.
Following the ns-3 guidelines, the source of the documentation is maintained in .rst format and is stored in the mercurial repository alongside with the source code.
API Documentation
The API documentation of the code implementing the LTE-EPC model is also available html format. This is generated using doxygen following the ns-3 guidelines, hence it includes not only the LTE-EPC API but also the complete ns-3 API.
Questions about how to use LENA
The LENA developers team participates actively in the ns-3 community, and encourages LENA users to do the same. If you have a question about how to use the LENA code, you are recommended to post an email to the ns-3-users mailing list. Some tips before posting a question:
- check the LTE module documentation, most questions already have an answer there
- search previous posts on ns-3-users, chances are that somebody asked the same question before
How to contribute to the development
The development of the ns-3 LTE module is still ongoing and open to contributions by the community.
If you are interested in contributing, e.g., by developing some new functionality or by fixing an existing bug, feel free to drop an email to Nicola Baldo, the LENA project leader at CTTC (nbaldo at cttc dot es).
Video Gallery
| LENA project overview | The LENA ns-3 LTE module | LENA @ LTE World Summit 2012 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Publications
In addition to the above mentioned documentation, the following papers describe some specific aspects of LENA:
- N. Baldo, M. Miozzo, M. Requena, J. Nin Guerrero, An Open Source Product-Oriented LTE Network Simulator based on ns-3, in Proceedings of the 14th ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWIM 2011), 31-4 November 2011, Miami Beach, FL (USA).
- N. Baldo, M. Requena, J. Nin, M. Miozzo, A new model for the simulation of the LTE-EPC data plane, in Proceedings of the Workshop on ns-3 (WNS3 2012), Sirmione, Italy, 23 March 2012
- M. Mezzavilla, M. Miozzo, M. Rossi, N. Baldo, M. Zorzi, A Lightweight and Accurate Link Abstraction Model for System-Level Simulation of LTE Networks in ns-3, In Proceedign of the 15th ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (ACM MSWIM 2012), Paphos (Cyprus Island), 21-25 October 2012.
