Design and Implementation of an LTE System with Multi-Thread Parallel Processing on OpenAirInterface Platform

Software Defined Radio (SDR) system has great advantages of high flexibility and better reconfigurability in simulating and verifying the new communication technologies. Among all the SDR systems based on general purpose processor (GPP), OpenAirInterface (OAI) is one of the most comprehensive and competitive open-source SDR systems. Due to the design of signal-thread processing in the system, the user equipment (UE) of OAI still cannot process the vast amounts of data when the bandwidth is up to 20 MHz in the real-time experiments. This paper provides an overview of the system architecture in the real-time experimentation of OAI and analyzes its baseband signal processing. Then, the authors of this paper propose and implement a method of multithread parallel processing on the UE of OAI. Over-the-air experiments are carried out with the proposed method for the purpose of performance evaluation in the real- time wireless environment. Results demonstrate that the proposed method enhances the performance of the OAI system and shows its potential for the fifth generation (5G) technology.

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