UEsim LTE Multi UE

 

This tutorial is to show how to simulate multiple UEs with a single UEsim. For the simplicity, I am simulating only 5 UEs but you can simulate maximum of 500 or 1000 UEs with single Amari UEsim  

One of the difficulties of performing this type of test is about how to automate UE operation. It would be challenging the operate each of the UE manually when the number of UEs are high. There are roughly three types of automating UE if you are using Amarisoft UEsim (If you are using commercial UEs, you need to come out with your own way of manipulating UEs). The first way is to test completely manual mode and another way is to use GUI based automation called Scenario which is provided by WebGUI and the last way is to use event settings in configuration file. In this tutorial, I will be doing all the test mannually. For the operation with Scenario, you may refer to this tutorial and for the operation with event settings in configuration file, you may refer to other tutorial.

NOTE : Exact max number of active UE vary depending on product type, radio access technology and license type as shown in the following tables.

 

For further details of the specification of AMARI UE Simbox Series, refer to this product datasheet.

 

For further details of the specification of AMARI UE SimboxE Series, refer to this product datasheet.

 

For further details of the specification of AMARI UE Simbox MBS Series, refer to this product datasheet.

 

Table of Contents

• UEsim LTE Multi UE
• Test Setup
• Key Configuration Parameters
• Configuration
• Perform the test
• Log Analysis

 

Test Setup

Test setup for this tutorial is as shown below.  

• SIM Card used in this tutorial is the one delivered with the system as it is.
• If you want to change the configuration, The tutorial Configuration Guide would help

 

Key Configuration Parameters

Followings are important configuration parameters for this tutorial. You may click on the items for the descriptions from Amarisoft documents.

• UEsim
• multi_ue
• ue_count
• global_timing_advance

 

Configuration

I used the ue.default-multi-ue.cfg which is copied and modified from ue.default.cfg (LTE default configuration).

I used the enb.default.cfg (LTE default configuration).

I used the mme-ims-multi-ue.cfg  which is copied and modeified from mme-ims.cfg

In the mme-ims-multi-ue.cfg, I changed the configuration so that ue_db-ims-multi-ue.cfg is used on Callbox.

In this tutorial, following SIM information will be used within ue_db-ims-multi-ue.cfg. Make it sure to configure the same parameters on UE side as well. If you are using "xor" algorithm, you don't have to configure every UE with different imsi. You just put the starting imsi value and MME and UEsim will automatically handle the automatically incremented IMSI values.

In ue.default-multi-ue.cfg on UEsim, Make it sure that imsi and K value in this file matches the value on enb side shown in previous slide. You see here that multi_ue is set to true and ue_count is set to the number greater than 1. If authentication algorithm (sim_algo) is set to "xor", IMSI automatically increment from the starting value through (starting imsi+ue_count-1)

Following is the configuration in enb.default.cfg on Callbox. The parameters here is not critical for multi UE test. You can use any settings as long as there is not problem with the attach.

This is optional. In enb.default.cfg, I made a small change as shown below. I set the inactivity_timer to 1 minutes (60000 ms) to wait for enough time untill all the UE are registerred before releasing RRC (This is not mandatory)

Following is the configuration in ue.default-multi-ue.cfg on UE sim.  Set UE_COUNT to 5 (whatever number you want) and other parameters are not important for this test.

 

Perform the test

Start trace logging on Callbox.

Power on UE on UE sim. '*' indicates powering on all the UEs configured.

Then you see following traces on Callbox and confirm all the UEs get attached. You can check out which UEs are camped on via the numbers under UE_ID column.

You can check the list of all the UE status with 'ue' command on UE sim.  Make it sure that you see all the UE under 'UE_ID' column and the EMM_STATE of all the UE is marked 'registered'.

You can check the list of all the UE status with 'ue' command on (enb) on Callbox. The UE ID will be shown here only when a UE is in connection mode. So it is OK if you don't see all the UEs here.

You can check the list of all the UE connected to MME with 'ue' command on (mme) on Callbox. Make it sure that you see all the UEs shown here with different SUPI and all UE is marked 'Y'(Yes) under REG column.

You may try ping from Callbox to all of the UEs. ping to each and every IPs that are assigned to each UE.

 

Log Analysis

Sample Log

I would not go through all the log since this would just be the repetition of basic LTE attach procedure. The only thing that I want to highlight is the Attach Request from UE sim log showing different IMSI values for each UE as shown below.