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Setting up Yate and YateBTS with the bladeRF
This guide is a quick and unofficial guide on creating a test setup of Null Team's Yate and YateBTS with the bladeRF. The goals of this guide are to:
- Install Yate and YateBTS for use as non-root user in a
yategroup in/usr/local/ - Verify basic "Network-in-a-Box" functionality by placing a call or sending an SMS message between two devices.
While the Nuand team and bladeRF community are generally willing to help answer Yate & YateBTS questions, please note that the official resources listed below will likely better expedite any troubleshooting you need to do.
- Yate website
- Yate wiki
- Installing Yate and its prerequisites
- YateBTS website
- YateBTS wiki
- Installing YateBTS and its prerequisites
- Yate forums
- The #yate IRC channel on Freenode
- YateBTS lab kit - A complete 2.5G network in a box!
As with all SDR development, you are responsible for ensuring that you operate only within bands for which you are licensed. When performing laboratory experiments, an RF test enclosure is highly recommended to ensure a system under test does not yield out-of-band emissions that might interfere with licensed network operators.
A USB 3.0 connection is preferred.
If you are on a USB 2.0 port and encounter errors (as evidenced by varying timestamp "jumps"), it may be the case that the system is not keeping up with the sample rate. Be sure to review the Transceiver Scheduling Priority section below, if you plan on using USB 2.0.
A simple and inexpensive setup test setup can be achieved using a blank SIM card, a SIM card writer, and low-cost cellular device.
This "16 in 1 Super SIM" has been verified to work properly. These all appear to come preprogrammed with the IMSI 001010123456789. To configure the sim card, please see this page about PySIM.
Plenty of quad-band GSM devices are available online. One such device that has been tested with the above SIM card is the BLU Q170T.
To build Yate and YateBTS, basic knowledge of how to use GNU Autotools and GCC is required. Please refer to your Linux distribution's documentation for information on how to install these. If you plan to check out the latest source code, Subversion is required.
In the past, a transceiver implementation was provided with Yate-BTS that was dependent upon libbladeRF. Yate now provides bladeRF support that is not dependent upon libbladeRF. Additionally, Yate provides tested bladeRF FPGA images. Therefore, it is no longer required to build and install libbladeRF, the bladeRF-cli, or download FPGA images.
However, bladeRF-cli and libbladeRF installation is useful for diagnostics, to verify basic device operation, and to update firmware.
Users familiar with Yate-BTS will note that there is no transceiver-bladerf to place in the ybts.conf file. Instead, the ybladerf.conf file may be used to performed fine-grained configuration of the bladeRF, with respect to Yate.
If you do not have libbladeRF installed, you will still need to create and add an /etc/udev/rules.d/88-nuand.rules file to ensure your user has permissions to access a bladeRF device. Below is an example file, which assumes your
user is in the plugdev group. (Using a yate group could also suffice, as this group is used later in this guide.)
This guide assumes one wants to run Yate as a non-root user, and uses a yate group to allow a non-root user to edit the various configuration files that will be manipulated at runtime.
First create a yate group:
sudo addgroup yateAdd your user to this group. Change myuser to your user name.
sudo usermod -A -G yate myuserA udev rule is required to ensure a user can access the bladeRF hardware.
If you have previously installed and used libbladeRF and/or the bladeRF-cli, you may skip this. These provide an 88-nuand.rules udev rule.
Otherwise, create an /etc/udev/rules.d/90-yate.rules file, containing:
# nuand bladeRF
ATTR{idVendor}=="1d50", ATTR{idProduct}=="6066", MODE="660", GROUP="yate"After creating this file, run the following command:
sudo udevadm control --reload-rulesIf the device is plugged in prior to this, ensure it is unplugged and re-connected at this time.
After logging out and back in, you should see yate listed when you run the groups command.
You can download the latest releases here:
The below commands may be used to check out the Yate and YateBTS repositories into a ~/software/null directory:
mkdir ~/software/null/
cd ~/software/null
svn checkout http://yate.null.ro/svn/yate/trunk yate
svn checkout http://voip.null.ro/svn/yatebts/trunk yatebtsIf you already have the repositories checked out from a previous build, you can simply update them:
cd ~/software/null/yate
svn update
cd ~/software/null/yate-bts
svn updateFirst, configure the build to install into usr/local:
cd ~/software/null/yate
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr/localNext, build Yate:
makeIf all went well, install it:
sudo make install
sudo ldconfigThis procedure should look quite similar.
cd ~/software/null/yatebts
./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr/localBuild:
makeInstall:
sudo make install
sudo ldconfigTo configure Yate & YateBTS to run as a non-root user, we need to change a few permissions and configuration options.
First, we'll create a few files that Yate will fill in with defaults:
sudo touch /usr/local/etc/yate/snmp_data.conf /usr/local/etc/yate/tmsidata.confNext, allow users of the yate group to modify configuration files:
sudo chown root:yate /usr/local/etc/yate/*.conf
sudo chmod g+w /usr/local/etc/yate/*.confWhile a majority of the configuration items will fall back to default values, there are a few items that the BTS operator is responsible for configuring correctly in /usr/local/etc/yate/ybts.conf
Radio.BandRadio.C0Identity.MCC
On some slower machines or when using USB 2.0 ports, you may see reports of "timestamp jumps" resulting from RX overruns. If this is the case, first ensure your CPU Governor is set to "performance" and that power settings are not limiting your CPU frequency. If problems persist, note that YateBTS provides the ability to increase the scheduling priority of the transceiver tasks.
Increasing the priority (i.e., decreasing its niceness) of a process generally requires additional privileges. We can edit the /etc/security/limits.conf file to grant users of the yate this ability by adding the following lines:
@yate hard nice -20
@yate hard rtprio 99Note that you may need to adjust these values per your situation, preferences, or policies. The below graphic, from ATAD #21, illustrates the meaning of the priority values:
HIGH PRIORITY – – – – – > – – – – – > – – – – – > – – – – – > – – – – LEAST PRIORITY
| real time priority (static priority) | nice value (dynamic priority) |
| 99 ............ 50 ............ 1 | -20 ..... -10 ..... 0 ...... 10 ...... 19 |The transceiver scheduling priority can be set in the [transceiver] of the /usr/local/etc/yate/ybts.conf file:
radio_read_priority=highest
radio_send_priority=highNon-privileged users cannot bind sockets on ports lower than 1024. Therefore, we must change the SNMP ports. (Note that clients will need to be aware of this, if you plan to use SNMP.)
To do this, edit /usr/local/etc/yate/ysnmpagent.conf and look for the following lines:
;port=161;remote_port=162Uncomment these by removing the preceding ; character, and set these to available ports greater than or equal to 1024. For example:
port=20161
remote_port=20162At this point, you should be able to plug in a bladeRF and run yate. When doing so, you should see LEDs on the bladeRF begin to blink. This indicates that the device's FPGA has been loaded and is in use.
Note that you use -v, -vv, -vvv, and so on to enable increasing degrees of verbosity.
One simple way to allow a device to register is by placing its IMSI in the regexp field in /usr/local/etc/yate/subscribers.conf. As noted by the comments in this file, using a regular expression for IMSIs prevents one from utilizing 2G/3G authentication features; thus, this is suitable only for initial testing.
If you previously programmed your SIM, you should already know the IMSI such that you can place it in the regexp field.
If you are unsure or find that your device is not registering, you can use the NIB telnet interface to list rejected devices, as shown below.
With yate running:
telnet localhost 5038Once connected, one can list registered devices.
nib list registeredRejected devices can also be listed. If your device is not registering
and is in this list, it implies that it is not properly entered in subscribers.conf
nib list rejectedFor example, suppose your devices have IMSIs ranging from 001010123456780 to 001010123456789. You could use the following regexp:
regexp=^00101012345678[0-9]$While Yate is running, this change can be applied via the telnet interface, using the following command:
nib reloadWithin a few minutes of registering the device should receive a text message noting its assigned phone number.
The Yate NIB setup includes an ELIZA chat bot that you can communicate with by sending SMS messages to 35492. This is a good way to test use of a single device.
After registering a second device, you should be able to send SMS messages and connect a call between two devices.