  This paper presents the design and implementation of signaling splitting
scheme in hyper-cellular network on a software defined radio platform.
Hyper-cellular network is a novel architecture of future mobile communication
systems in which signaling and data are decoupled at the air interface to
mitigate the signaling overhead and allow energy efficient operation of base
stations. On an open source software defined radio platform, OpenBTS, we
investigate the feasibility of signaling splitting for GSM protocol and
implement a novel system which can prove the proposed concept. Standard GSM
handsets can camp on the network with the help of signaling base station, and
data base station will be appointed to handle phone calls on demand. Our work
initiates the systematic approach to study hyper-cellular concept in real
wireless environment with both software and hardware implementations.
