OpenAirInterface documentation overview

This is the general overview page of the OpenAirInterface documentation.
This page groups links to general information, tutorials, design documents, radio integration, and special-purpose libraries.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
Before reading this documentation, we strongly advise you to keep your own repository rebased on develop or at least to checkout the documentation on the version of the repository you are using.
Then the documentation will better reflect the features available in your repository so that you may avoid some errors.
Beware if you previously pulled the develop branch that your repository may be now behind develop.

[[TOC]]

General

• FEATURE_SET.md: lists supported features
• GET_SOURCES.md: how to download the sources
• BUILD.md: how to build the sources
• code-style-contrib.md: overall working practices, code style, and review process
• cross-compile.md: how to cross-compile OAI for ARM
• clang-format.md: how to format the code
• sanitizers.md: how to run with ASan/UBSan/MemSAN/TSan
• environment-variables.md: the environment variables used by OAI
• tuning_and_security.md: performance and security considerations

There is some general information in the OpenAirInterface Gitlab Wiki

Tutorials

• Step-by-step tutorials to set up 5G:
  • OAI 5GC
  • OAI gNB with COTS UE
  • OAI NR-UE
  • Multiple OAI NR-UE with RFsimulator
• RUNMODEM.md: Generic information on how to
  • Run simulators
  • Run with hardware
  • Specific OAI modes (phy-test, do-ra, noS1)
  • (5G) Using SDAP and custom DRBs
  • IF setups and arbitrary frequencies
  • MIMO
• How to run OAI with O-RAN 7.2 FHI
• How to run a 5G-NSA setup
• How to run a 4G setup using L1 simulator Note: we recommend the RFsimulator
• How to use the L2 simulator
• How to use the OAI channel simulator
• How to use multiple BWPs
• How to run OAI-VNF and OAI-PNF: how to run the nFAPI split, including some general remarks on FAPI/nFAPI.
• How to use the positioning reference signal (PRS)
• How to use device-to-device communication (D2D, 4G)
• How to run with E2 agent
• How to run the physical simulators
• How to setup OAI with Nvidia Aerial and Foxconn
• How to setup OAI with AMD T2 Telco card
• How to do a handover
• How to setup gNB frequency

Legacy unmaintained files:

• L2NFAPI_NOS1.md, L2NFAPI_S1.md: old L2simulator, not valid anymore
• SystemX-tutorial-design.md: old, high-level documentation
• UL_MIMO.txt: UL-MIMO specific notes

Designs

• General software architecture notes: SW_archi.md
• Information on E1
• Information on F1
• Information on how NR nFAPI works
• Flow graph of the L1 in gNB
• L1 threads in NR-UE
• Information on gNB MAC
• Information on gNB RRC
• Information on analog beamforming implementation
• Information on the UE 5G NAS implementation

Building and running from images

• How to build images
• How to run 5G with the RFsimulator from images
• How to run 4G with the RFsimulator from images
• How to run physical simulators in OpenShift

Libraries

General

• The T tracer: a generic tracing tool (VCD, Wireshark, GUI, to save for later, ...)
• OPT: how to trace to wireshark
• The configuration module
• The logging module
• The shared object loader
• The threadpool used in L1
• The LDPC implementation is a shared library
• The time management module

Radios

Some directories under radio contain READMEs:

• RFsimulator
• USRP
• BladeRF
• IQPlayer, and general documentation
• fhi_72
• vrtsim

The other SDRs (AW2S, LimeSDR, ...) have no READMEs.

Special-purpose libraries

• OAI has two scopes: one based on Xforms and one based on imgui, described in this README
• OAI comes with an integrated telnet server to monitor and control
• OAI comes with an integrated web server

Testing

• UnitTests.md explains the unit testing setup
• TESTBenches.md lists the CI setup and links to pipelines

Developer tools

• formatting is a clang-format error detection tool
• iwyu is a tool to detect #include errors
• docker-dev-env is a ubuntu22 docker development environment