OpenEPC: A technical infrastructure for early prototyping of NGMN testbeds

The challenging and ever increasing requirements of future applications demand new concepts for better control and management of network resources. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) introduced in their latest specifications the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) architecture for transparently unifying the parameters of different technologies, like the UMTS, WLAN, non-3GPP access technologies and a future Evolved Radio Access Network, called Long Term Evolution (LTE), with the use of multiple application platforms such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and the Internet. This paper describes a testbed implementation of the Evolved Packet Core named OpenEPC which provides a reference implementation of 3GPPs EPC developed by the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS. OpenEPC is a set of software com ponents offering advanced IP mobility schemes, policy-based QoS control, and integration with different application platforms in converging network environments. This initiative, in addition to fostering research and development, enables academic and industry researchers to rapidly realize state-of-the-art NGMN infrastructures and application testbeds.