How to Use

GSM/3G/4G in
Embedded Linux
Systems

Introduction
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Embedded devices connected to the internet are

growing every day. In many cases, these devices will
be installed somewhere without a wire or wireless
network
connection.
A good
wayin
tothese situations
keep the devices
connected
to the
internet
is by seeking mobile network coverage. Therefore, this blog
post will present the necessary configurations to connect a
device running Linux to the internet through the PPP (
Point-to-Point Protocol) link.and optimize cost. In simple terms,
modularity means that a system can be built by assembling
many small units.
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Hardware Specification
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In this article we will be using the Colibri iMX6S with the base
board called Colibri Evaluation Board, both of which, are from
Toradex. The Colibri Evaluation Board is recommended
specifically for project evaluation and development. This product
comes with a great number of interfaces like USB, Ethernet, I2C,
SPI, RS242, RS485, CAN and many others. We can also find some
multimedia interfaces like HDMI, LVDS, VGA and LCD already
supported on the Evaluation Board.
To follow this tutorial, you can use any USB or Serial modem to
connect to the internet.
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You just have to adapt the interface created at /dev/ and check
the AT commands supported and implemented for your
modem
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because each modem has specific AT commands. In this case, we
have used for this tutorial a Huawei E173s 3G modem with a
compatible SIM Card with data plan activated.

Kernel Preparing
To use the 3G USB modem through the PPP protocol, it is
necessary to select some features in the kernel configurations and
then compile the Kernel. To understand how to compile the kernel,
I suggest following the link below.
http://developer.toradex.com/software-resources/arm-family/linux/
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Basically, the process to compile the Kernel can be

summarized in the following steps:

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Toolchain configuration

Download the kernel from the correct repository and branch

Configure the standard processor features

Change the features for your application

Compile

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When you are configuring the kernel features, go into

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menuconfig and be sure to enable the following options:

CONFIG_PPP:
PPP (Point to Point Protocol) is a newer and better SLIP. It
serves the same purpose: sending Internet traffic over
telephone (and other serial) lines. Ask your access provider if
they support it, because otherwise you can't use it; most
Internet access providers these days support PPP rather than
SLIP.
Device Drivers --->
[*] Network device support --->
PPP (point-to-point protocol) support
PPP BSD-Compress compression
PPP Deflate compression
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[*]

PPP filtering
PPP MPPE compression (encryption)
[*]
PPP multilink support
PPP over Ethernet
PPP support for async serial ports
PPP support for sync tty ports

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CONFIG_USB_ACM:
This driver supports USB modems and ISDN adapters which support
the
Communication Device Class Abstract Control Model interface.
Please read <file:Documentation/usb/acm.txt> for details.
Device Drivers --->
[*] USB support --->
USB Modem (CDC ACM) support

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Necessary Software Packages

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To configure and connect the 3G modem to the internet, Linux
uses, in
addition to the kernel drivers, a software which manages the
connection. This software is PPP. Usually Toradex images already have
the PPP software installed by default.
In case you do not have PPP installed, just add the following to your
local.conf file for build environments based on Yocto/OpenEmbedded:

Testing Communication with the Modem

After all the necessary drivers and software are installed, it is possible
to check if the module recognizes the 3G modem. The modem
interface should appear in /dev. Basically the driver simulates a USB
connection as many serial connections.
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Execute the following command to search for the interfaces

/dev/ttyUSB
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If the files ttyUSB0, ttyUSB1 e ttyUSB2 were found, the modem

was succesfully recognized by the system.
In case you want to conduct in-depth testing, it is possible to use a
serial terminal like minicom to start communicating with the
modem and check if it is working well. In my case the modem had a
baudrate of 115200.

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Configuring the PPP Files

After validating the communication with the modem, it is time to
create the configuration files responsible for connecting to the
internet.
You should be able to find a folder inside /etc/ called ppp. Some files
need to be created inside this folder.
First we create the PPP options file:
$ vi /etc/ppp/options
_____________________________________
auth
crtscts
lock
hide-password
modem
mru 296

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mtu 296
lcp-echo-interval 30
lcp-echo-failure 4
noipx
persist
asyncmap 0xa0000
mru 1500
refuse-chap
ipcp-max-failure 30
logfile /home/root/ppp

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In my case we use the PAP authentication file (may vary depending on

Network Provider).

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The next step is to create one more file inside /etc/ppp/peer In this file we
have configurations for our network provider and the path for the chat
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file:

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Now we create the file responsible for sending the AT commands to the
modem so it can connect to the internet. This file varies according to
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modem models/brands.

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Connecting to the Internet

Next we run ppp and analyze the log files. In the log files we can
see
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when each AT command has been executed.

After running ppp, we open the log file:

In my case, I received the following output:

tail -f ppp.log
Sent 3940 bytes, received 2843 bytes.
restoring old default route to eth0 [192.168.10.1]
restore default route ioctl(SIOCADDRT): Network is
unreachable(101)
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Script /etc/ppp/ip-down started (pid 778)

sent [LCP TermReq id=0x2 "User request"]
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rcvd [LCP TermAck id=0x2]
Connection terminated.
Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 778), status = 0x0
ATZ
OK
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","zap.vivo.com.br"
OK
ATDT*99#
CONNECT
Script chat -v -f /etc/ppp/chat/vivo-3g.chat finished (pid 795), status
= 0x0
Serial connection established.
using channel 2
Using interface ppp0
Connect: ppp0 /dev/ttyACM0
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rcvd [LCP ConfReq id=0x1

]
sent [LCP ConfReq id=0x1 ]
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sent [LCP ConfAck id=0x1
]
rcvd [LCP ConfAck id=0x1 ]
sent [LCP EchoReq id=0x0 magic=0xa068db01]
sent [PAP AuthReq id=0x1 user="vivo" password=]
rcvd [LCP EchoRep id=0x0 magic=0x96baf40f]
rcvd [PAP AuthAck id=0x1 ""]
PAP authentication succeeded
sent [CCP ConfReq id=0x1 ]
sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x1 ]
rcvd [LCP ProtRej id=0x2 80 fd 01 01 00 0f 1a 04 78 00 18 04 78 00
15]
Protocol-Reject for 'Compression Control Protocol' (0x80fd) received
rcvd [IPCP ConfNak id=0x1 ]
sent [IPCP ConfReq id=0x2 ]
rcvd [IPCP ConfNak id=0x2 ]
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sent
rcvd
sent
rcvd
sent
rcvd
sent
rcvd
sent
rcvd
sent
rcvd
sent
rcvd
sent
rcvd

[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP
[IPCP

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ConfReq id=0x3 ]
ConfNak id=0x3 ]
ConfReq id=0x4 ]
ConfNak id=0x4 ]
ConfReq id=0x5 ]
ConfNak id=0x5 ]
ConfReq id=0x6 ]
ConfReq id=0x1]
ConfNak id=0x1 ]
ConfRej id=0x6 ]
ConfReq id=0x7 ]
ConfReq id=0x2 ]
ConfAck id=0x2 ]
ConfNak id=0x7 ]
ConfReq id=0x8 ]
ConfAck id=0x8 ]
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local IP address 179.133.47.109

remote IP address 179.133.47.109
primary DNS address 187.100.246.254
secondary DNS address 187.100.246.251
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up started (pid 805)
Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 805), status = 0x0

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As seen in the log file, the chat script is executed step-by-step until we get
the following:

You can validate the necessary command sequence to get connected

using the serial terminal. Once it is validated, you can create your
own customized chat script.
After checking for an IP address from the network provider, look for
whether the ppp0 network interface is active:
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CHAIRMAN

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Testing the Connection

To test if the connection has been successfully established, ping
an
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external ip address:

To configure DNS, we can use the following command and then ping a
URL, for example:

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CHAIRMAN

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Image 1:
A running
web
browser
using 3G
connectio
n.May16 | 22

We can avoid the file being rewritten when system is restarted with
the following command:

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Now it is possible to connect using SSH from an external

computer:

Configuring a Host Name for our IP Address

Another thing we can do is to associate our IP address to a host
name. For this purpose, we used the NoIP services (www.noip.com).
We then created a free account and added a Host. In our case, we
chose toradex.noip.me.

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CHAIRMAN

Image 2: NoIP Add Host page.

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After the Host name is created we can again connect to the module using
SSH:
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In our case, when the 3G modem connection is restarted, we always

receive a new IP adress. If we try to reconnect to the module, we no
longer have access. A workaround was to use a method called Dynamic
DNS(Dynamic Domain Name System). NoIP also offers Dynamic DNS
services. Further information for using this method can be found here.
Basically we send an http request to NoIP with information like IP,
hostname, username and password.
To accomplish this request, a small Python program was made. It gets
executed when we start the 3G modem connection and follows the
sequence as listed below:

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CHAIRMAN

Image 3: Python Application Fluxogram.

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#!/usr/bin/python
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import sys
import requests
import netifaces as ni
user = 'xxxxxxx'
pswd = 'xxxxxxx'
ni.ifaddresses('ppp0')
ip = ni.ifaddresses('ppp0')[2][0]['addr']
myhostname = 'toradex.noip.me'
payload = {'hostname' : myhostname , 'myip' : ip}
r = requests.get("http://dynupdate.no-ip.com/nic/update",
params=payload, auth=(user,pswd))
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print " "

if "good" in r.text:
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print "Hello", user, "!"
print "Your IP was successfully updated to:", ip
print myhostname, "is up and running!"
if "nochg" in r.text:
print "Hello", user, "!"
print "Your IP", ip, "is still active, no change needed"
if "nohost" in r.text:
print "The given Host name", myhostname, "does not exist under
specified account"
print "Please review your Host name and try again"
if "badauth" in r.text:
print "Login and/or Username incorrect"
print "Please correct your credentials and try again"
if "911" in r.text:
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print "Sorry for the incovenience but we are experiencing some

problems right now"
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print "Please try again later"
print "noip.com says:", r.text
print creating
""
After
the Python program and making it executable with
chmod +x, we can move it to /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/, which is a folder where
scripts are executed after ppp connection or create a small script
which calls our Python program.
Inside /etc/ppp/ we have the files that we created at the beginning of
the article as well as other files like ip-down, ip-up, ppp_on_boot. Feel
free to explore each one of these files.
ip-up is the script which calls another script or program found inside ipup.d folder.
In this case, we created a small script inside ip-up.d

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Note: the script is not terminated with .sh

Note that all the print commands inside our Python program can be seen in
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the log file:

If everything is configured correctly, when we receive a new IP from our

network provider, the system automatically updates our host created at
NoIP, so it will be possible to connect to the module despite the IP
address being changed.
Based on all the information provided in this article, it is possible to
achieve many other network activities. One of them is to share the 3G
modem network with another computer via Ethernet. For this we
configured a basic LAN network between two machines and ran the
following command:
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CHAIRMAN

Apart from internet sharing, it is also possible to conduct port

forwarding and many other network features.

Final Thoughts
As seen in this article, a Linux system has many network
functionalities. We just need to properly configure them and have
access to ppp0 network. Another important point, is that regardless of
the used interface, the programming method remains the same. The
task of choosing the interface to use is made automatically by Linux
depending on the routes. For those who require network connection in
their projects and also need system flexibility, the use of Linux in
embedded systems is the way to go.

References
http://metodiew.com/huawei-e173s-and-ubuntu/
http://developer.toradex.com/product-selector/colibri-imx6
http://developer.toradex.com/product-selector/colibri-evaluation-board
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Thank
you!

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