Ananki: Software-defined Private Enterprise 5G | Hacker News Reader

Ananki: Software-defined Private Enterprise 5G

ananki.io

55 pointszdw21 comments

It's good to see more 5G SDR for Enterprise. This will accelerate adoption.

It is now super easy to get 5G frequencies in Europe for private use. See for example https://campusnetzplaner.kn.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/ where you buy your spectrum online in one click. In France, you can get your private N38 spectrum for 150€/month/km2

And the hardware is just as easy to build and run. With less than two cores of a low-end i5 CPU, Amarisoft stack and SlapOS edge OS, we could manufacture for Rapid.Space our own 5G base station which delivers 5G over N78. There is still enough room inside to run a software PLC next to the gNodeB. See the pictures of the assembly process and what's inside:

https://handbook.rapid.space/provider/rapidspace-ORS.Assembl...

The PC is a standard IPC from Taiwan (Commell) and the SDR is open source hardware from FDL https://www.fdl-lef.org/projects/

I hope we will see more open source hardware for 5G base stations with different sorts of CPUs doing the radio processing (AMD, Zhaoxin, ARM, RISC V) without the need of accelerator components. 5G radio signal processing can be nowadays entirely done in software and it is not so hard thnaks to SIMD instructions found in most CPUs. I have even seen recently a sample of a fully software defined array of antenas (32T32R) with 100 MHz bw, entirely implemented with software.

I see a lot of buzzwords on this page. Can someone explain what's the actual benefit of this and why it's important?

tl;dr warehouses, factories and other places similar in size to a campus can create their own wireless network based on their 5G stack (vs WiFi, LoRa, 4G) to communicate between nodes, usually things like weather seasors on warehouse rooftops, robot telemetry on factory floors, etc

Thank you! Why can't they just say this. It actually makes a lot of sense and I would be interested, if it wasn't for all these non-sense buzzwords.

Anyway, thank you again for explaining.

> Why can't they just say this.

I mean, they do. Go back and reread the first and last graphics.

np, i'm in the space myself and am actively exploring vendors :) tbh there's not much in this space rn that's not a deep integration, so unless you're looking for it, the material can be a bit opaque

And does this include things like positioning? I remember some buzz around indoor positioning in 5G, but I'm hazy on whether it was built in, or just general speculation.

i dont think any of the vendors claim positioning capability solely on 5G in their published literature, their engineers whisper about interesting demos with stuff "around the corner", but I'd take that with a grain of salt

you'd need at least three nodes apparently :)

Why is no one talking about the privacy implications of 5G (and by no one I mean mainstream adoption efforts)? It feels like all the nutcase 5G conspiracy theories are to distract from the real issue at hand, which is that the legal and societal framework to handle the fact that you need a mobile phone to function in a modern society (keeps getting worse) and that 5G can be used to track your whereabouts with sometimes better than gps precision simply do not exist.

Even if such frameworks exist, I personally don't think i want cops to track me with precision even with a warrant. I am not against better tech, I am against lazy tech, there has to be a better solution!

Also pretty much every car in a few years will be connected all time, so someone somewhere will always have the means to monitor its position, visited places, conversations, etc. There's no solution; in just a couple decades we transitioned from local private unconnected CCTV (shops, malls, etc.) to pervasive government surveillance in cities, and we adapted to it; from this to drones with cameras flying and connected 24/7 it's just a matter of time. And we'll also adapt to that. In due time it is entirely possible that each one of us will have a personal governmental drone constantly following us to prevent crime, though actually in our pocket we already carry one which cost nothing to governments.

I know what you say is possible but that's my point. That's why we have laws. The government and corporations/feudals use to be able to do a lot worse but now we have laws and enforcement of those laws.

The fact that this software is named "Big Brother" is pretty on point.

5G is nothing but marketing wank. Carriers aren't deploying some new sci-fi technology, they are just incrementally upgrading their networks to a more recent (and backwards compatible) revision of the LTE standard.

5G is a generation of cellular network tech that allows higeher frequency and more spread out (oversimplifying a bit) cell "towers". Even if you don't use 5G (or any tech at all) it can be used to track your movement with good precision.

An optional part of the new LTE revision is support for millimeter wave radios. These radios have very short range and so you would need a lot of them, more like WiFi hotspots than cell towers. I guess that means that the carrier could geolocate you better, but only if you have a supported device and are very near a millimeter wave AP.

This is what i mean: https://sci-hub.st/downloads/2020-11-04/ff/guan2020.pdf?rand...

> makes 5G as easy as WiFi

Except for the little question about 5G spectrum licensing. :-)

Aren't there provisions in the standards that allow for spectrum sharing with unlicensed bands?

> Aren't there provisions in the standards that allow for spectrum sharing with unlicensed bands?

There are, yes. But there is typically a bit more to it than just writing out a cheque to the regulator.

There's an application process involved, no guarantees of approval, and ongoing compliance requirements (with the ultimate possibility of revocation of license, of course).

For example, if you're within a few KM of certain military sites (typically listening stations) you'll get an automatic rejection.

e.g. From in UK:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/manage-your-licence/radiocommunicat...

(expand the drop downs at the bottom to see "Shared access guidance", "Frequency Assignment Criteria" and "Interface Requirements")

> CBRS is a band of wireless spectrum – a 150 MHz wide contiguous band of the 3.5 GHz band

> Though the FCC will auction CBRS licenses, called Priority Access Licenses (PALs), enterprises will still be able secure General Authorized Access (GAA) to CBRS spectrum without a license.

https://www.sierrawireless.com/iot-blog/new-cbrs-band/

There might even be a community hotspot alliance so you can roam:

> Helium 5G will be the second major wireless network that the Helium Network supports. If you have a phone that supports 5G, such as an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, you will soon be able to connect through Hotspots that are powered by the People — you may be getting 5G from your neighbor!

https://blog.helium.com/episode-two-the-path-to-5g-3f704a586...

> it is suggested that we initially set the price of passing 1GB of CBRS data through Helium network at $.50 per GB or $.00000003 per LTE packet of 66 bytes.

https://github.com/helium/HIP/blob/master/0027-cbrs-5g-suppo...

Why is the marketing for stuff like this so absurd? “Industry 4.0”, “transformative IIoT solutions”, “AI-powered”. Why would I want my networking equipment to be “AI-powered”?

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