Hello GSM community,

I am pleased to announce the first release of Themyscira GSM codec libraries and utilities package:

ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/codecs/gsm-codec-lib-r1.tar.bz2

The two principal libraries contained in this package, libgsmefr and libgsmfrp, continue the tradition that was started back in 1990s with the first release of libgsm, a Unix-oriented, C-library-embodied, Free Software implementation of GSM 06.10 speech transcoder. The original libgsm was written and released long before anyone in the hacker community even dreamed of running their own GSM network or building their own GSM MS, but it is now used somewhere deep under the hood (under lots of higher layers) by every GSM network-side implementation that includes an RTP transcoding gateway to other voice networks, activated whenever a GSM voice call is connected using good old FR codec rather than AMR, and is likewise used for the same purpose by anyone seeking to achieve working voice in an SDR-based GSM MS implementation.

The present gsm-codec-lib release - a public works project of the Women's Republic of Themyscira - continues in the spirit of libgsm by offering two more similar libraries:

1) libgsmefr is a librified (turned into a library) version of the EFR reference code from ETSI, with all state variables converted from global vars into proper state structures, and with additional code clean-up to make it function as a speech encoder and decoder library on the same principle as libgsm, but for EFR codec instead of FR1. All beyond-speech functions of the original EFR reference code (VAD, DTX, comfort noise, error concealment) are included in libgsmefr, allowing this library to be used to implement a *proper* speech transcoder for GSM-EFR voice service.

I have previously noted that the general trend in the FOSS GSM community is to use the popular AMR library libopencore-amrnb not only for AMR, but also for EFR. However, this approach is incorrect: the SID and comfort noise mechanism of EFR is different from AMR, and if you feed the uplink of a GSM-EFR call, containing SIDs and BFI skipped frames, to libopencore-amrnb decoder, there will be strange noises in the output in places where the GSM MS sent SID. Decoding EFR from a GSM call uplink requires a proper EFR library, not AMR, and I wasn't able to find any workable pre-existing implementation prior to producing Themyscira libgsmefr.

2) libgsmfrp is a preprocessor intended to be called prior to gsm_decode() from libgsm, implementing Rx DTX handler functions of GSM 06.11, 06.12 and 06.31. This preprocessor is required for anyone seeking to implement GSM FR service in the traditional way depicted in Figure 1 in 3GPP TS 46.001, as opposed to the "cut corners" way that seems to be favored in the land of Osmocom.

When used as part of GSM network deployment, as opposed to lab experimentation on the mobile side of GSM, the two just-released Themyscira libraries work best together with this patch to osmo-bts:

https://www.freecalypso.org/hg/themwi-system-sw/file/tip/osmo-patches/osmo-b...

implementing this extension to RTP transport format:

https://www.freecalypso.org/hg/themwi-system-sw/file/tip/doc/RTP-BFI-extensi...

The "go along to get along" community appears to operate on a consensus that the RTP stream should be paused when the uplink is in DTX, or when a traffic frame was stolen for FACCH or lost to radio errors - but I disagree with that approach, and instead operate my GSM network on the principle of sending an RTP packet in *every* 20 ms slot, be it rain or shine. In the "consensus" approach the speech decoding path in the transcoding MGW never executes at all during frame stream pauses (when no RTP packets are sent), but in my "traditionalist" approach (mimicking the ways of TDM) that decoding function does get called every 20 ms, and it must produce *some* output toward PSTN in every 20 ms window, whether the MS was transmitting or not, and whether this MS output was received or lost. The Rx DTX handler becomes essential in such operation: when there is no speech traffic from the MS, libgsmfrp fills in comfort noise or previous speech frame substitution and muting as appropriate per the rules of GSM 06.31. In the case of EFR this functionality is integral to the original reference code from ETSI and thus appears in libgsmefr, but in the case of FR1 codec this functionality takes the form of a preprocessor, implemented in libgsmfrp.

In any case, the two newly released libraries are intended to sit on the same "rank" in the software integration hierarchy as classic libgsm from 1990s, and higher-level projects by various parties should feel free to use them in the same manner how they currently use libgsm and libopencore-amrnb. I encourage gapk and various people's transcoding MGW implementations to take advantages of these newly available production quality GSM codec libraries.

With devotion to GSM Forever, (Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,) Mother Mychaela