Open-LTE: An Open LTE Simulator
For Mobile Video Streaming
Qinghua Zheng, Haipeng Du, Junke Li, Weizhan Zhang
MOEKLINNS Lab
Department of Computer Science and Technology
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
{qhzheng,duhaipeng,jkli,zhangwzh}@mail.xjtu.edu.cn
Abstract—Simulation is the optimal means to evaluate the
booming researches on how to enhance the end-to-end service
reliability of mobile video streaming over LTE network. However,
to the best of our knowledge, all existing LTE network simulators
provide simulations of relatively closed virtual networks, in which
only meaningless tracing data can be simulated being delivered.
Researches on mobile video streaming have not yet been fully
supported. In light of this, herein, the open LTE simulator Open-
Sim is made to provide the simulation of virtual LTE network
with the ability to connect actual hosts over real wired link in
realtime. The transport and application layer related logics of
video streaming can be deployed on remote hosts and will no
longer be limited by the simulator framework. Open-LTE is
thus compatible with experimental studies on most aspects of
mobile video streaming. Open-LTE is simple to use by providing
a centralized configuration file to set up the LTE channel fading
scenarios and interconnect real traffic with the virtual LTE
network. We will demonstrate our work with QoE experiments
on a live video streaming application.
Keywords: LTE, simulator, mobile video streaming
I. I NTRODUCTION
With the improving complexity of mobile network, for
which building a test bed or an emulator is costly, simulation is
the optimal choice for academia communities to evaluate their
proposed techniques on cross layer QOS optimization. For
Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, there are usually three
ways to obtain testing environment: (1) commercial telecom
service provides a readily available LTE network but a public
network is not suitable for experimental study because any
actual unpredictable situations may cause inaccurate results.
(2) vendors of mobile communication equipment have imple-
mented their own LTE emulator commodities. Measurement
equipment has the best simulation results but is usually very
expensive. (3) LTE simulators have been realized to simulate
uplink/downlink scheduling strategies in multi-cell/multi-users
environments and end-to-end IP connectivity. The cost advan-
tage makes simulator the optimal choice for studies over LTE
network.
However, at present, all these simulators imitate relatively
closed virtual LTE networks. Data source and receiver attached
to the simulated LTE network must be derived from some
built-in modules of the simulation framework. This makes
these simulators virtually can only support simple meaningless
tracing data being delivered over the simulated LTE network.
Qingyu Li
Wondertek Software Co.Ltd.
liqingyu@wondertek.com.cn
Researches on mobile video streaming cannot be fully sup-
ported. Constrained by the universal simulator framework, it
is costly to generate coded video bitstream, which contains
a substantial amount of temporal and spatial dependencies.
The lack of support to decode a reconstructed video stream
after transmission over the virtual LTE network makes codec
based optimization impossible. Eventually, only transport layer
optimization can be evaluated with these simulators. These
limitations, which are caused by the closed nature of the
simulator framework, affect the research scope and reduce the
credibility of the experiment results.
In light of this, we present an LTE simulator to simulate an
open virtual LTE network with the ability to connect actual
hosts over real wired link in realtime. The simulator works
on the network layer and is transparent to upper layers. The
transport and application layer related logics of video stream-
ing can now be deployed on remote hosts and will no longer
be constrained by the simulator framework. The coded video
bitstream from the source is transmitted to the receiver through
the virtual LTE network with any required transport protocol
and can now be decoded on the receiver host. Open-Sim is
thus compatible with a variety of experiments on mobile video
streaming. For example, Quality of Experience(QoE) based
research on mobile video streaming over LTE network can
now be accepted. Open-LTE is also easy to use by providing
a unified configuration file to set up the LTE channel fading
scenarios and interconnect real traffic and the virtual LTE
network. For example, the uplink and downlink bandwidth,
the distance between the end user and the base station, the
moving speed and direction of the end user, etc.
In fact, interfacing a simulator with real-world through de-
vices and/or software modules is usually called ”Emulation”.
However, Open-LTE is rather a simulator than an emulator.
For an emulator, the imitation of the behavior of LTE network
is usually performed with a standalone hardware device. The
main objective is to obtain better simulation fidelity and effi-
ciency. For Open-LTE, the core of the virtual LTE network is
fully imitated with a software simulator. The main contribution
is to solve the restrictions, which are caused by the closed
nature of the simulator framework, on the expansibility of
transport protocols and applications to support more kinds of
experimental studies especially for mobile video streaming.
 II. D ESIGN OF THE TOOL
Fig.1 gives the architecture of Open-LTE. Usually, three
actual hosts connected with local area network are necessary.
The source and receiver host is connected transparently with
Open-LTE.
Fig. 1. Architecture of Open-LTE
There are three main components in Open-LTE:
• Virtual LTE network module is designed to provide
the simulation of end-to-end IP connectivity of TDD-
LTE network. In our work, the core of the module is
built on LENA[1]. LENA has achieved the simulation of
the complete LTE protocol stack, including LTE Radio
Protocol Stack (RRC, PDCP, RLC, MAC, PHY), core
network interfaces, protocols and entities and other very
relevant aspects such as channel fading.
• Transit gateway is to provide Open-LTE the ability of
receiving and transferring actual data packets through the
physical wired link. Data packets from source to receiver
are first delivered to the gateway, from there, handed over
to virtual LTE network module and then forwarded to
the destination. The transit gateway is built on the EMU
module of ns-3[2].
• Routing table is to provide the routing rules when data
packets are delivered between the virtual network and the
actual network to establish an end-to-end connectivity.
Open-LTE works on network layer transparently like a
router.
To make Open-LTE easy to use, a unified configuration
file in xml format is provided to help setting up the LTE
channel fading scenarios and interconnecting real traffic with
the virtual LTE network. For example, the uplink and downlink
bandwidth, the distance between the end user device(UE)
and the base station, the moving speed and direction of
UE, etc. Prior to our work, these parameters are usually
distributed in different positions and cumbersome to modify
when the experiment is repeated. Fig.2 shows an example of
the configuration file and the correlated scenario.
Fig. 2. Configuration file and the scenario
In this scenario, the uplink and downlink bandwidth of
virtual LTE network is set to 1Mbps and 3Mbps. The network
performance is affected by the channel fading scenario gen-
erated from the configuration file. In this scenario, the initial
position of UE coincides with the base station and is uniformly
moving far away at a speed of 10m/s.
III. D EMO OF THE TOOL
In this demonstration, we will show the basic function of
Open-LTE with a customized video streaming application. The
demo scenario is illustrated in Fig.2. The data source connect-
ed with the bases station is a live video stream encoded with
H.264 at 25 fps. The video content is a running stopwatch. The
receiver attached to the LTE virtual Network is the playback
of the stream. The experimental scene is shown in Fig.3.
Fig. 3. Experiment scene
As UE is moving further away from the base station, we
have expected that the quality of the playback will gradually
reduce and finally stop at a certain moment. The degradation
of the bandwidth between UE and base station caused the
drop in video quality. The result is generally in line with
our expectation. The decreased video quality can be observed
visually on the receiver host. This demo is available on our
project website[3].
IV. C ONCLUSION
We have presented an easy way to use LTE simulator,
designed to simulate open virtual LTE network over real wired
link with the ability to transparently connect actual hosts.
Open-LTE supports experiment on most aspects of mobile
streaming by avoiding the traditional constraints brought in
from the simulator framework.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by National Science
Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 61103239; Chang
Jiang Scholars Program; The Ministry of Education Innovation
Research Team Nos. IRT13035; Key Projects in the National
Science and Technology Pillar Program under Grant Nos.
2012BAH16F02; the Shanghai Special Foundation of Software
and Integrated Circuit Industry under Grant Nos. 120421.
R EFERENCES
[1] LTE-EPC Network Simulator (LENA).
http://iptechwiki.cttc.es/LTE-EPC Network Simulator (LENA)
[2] NS-3.
http://www.nsnam.org
[3] VOP-LTESim: A Semi Physical Simulator of LTE Network.
https://github.com/biqiu/LTE-EMU-NS3