Actware has developed solutions for low-level protocols in the Radio Base Station (RBS). Actware also developed a custom solution for Ericsson, which is being used in the Operational Support Systems (OSS) within Ericsson.

General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)

The GPRS protocol stack was added to the existing 2G systems to allow for faster data communication. A Software Test Environment (STE) version of the protocol was implemented for the test environment TSS2000. The STE version emulated the protocol layers of the GPRS stack in a Sun Solaris environment. Actware developed the GPRS Signalling Link (GSL).

Operational Support Systems (OSS)

Moving from 2G to 3G required changes in the OSS. The OSS needed to be more automated, and to speed up the integration of multi-vendor solutions. The goal was to build a system which included every function necessary to monitor, measure and manage every part of the network.

To speed up the development of the OSS, a Common Integration Framework (CIF) was developed. The core component of the framework is the Configuration Service (CS). Briefly, this is a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) interface to an Object Oriented Database Management System (OODMS). By using the CS, the OSS developers are able to focus on Operational Support rather than OODMS issues. Actware partnered with Ericsson on the development of the CIF.

Software complexity measurements

Together with the Institute of Technology in Linkoping, Actware developed the analysis tool Eremit, for Ericsson. Eremit parses a set of flow charts from FcTools and calculates another set of complexity measurements. The result is used as input to the software verification activities.