I'm trying to deploy OpenBTS with USRP B100 using UHD. When I installed GNU Radio by apt-get it installed UHD as well, but when I tried to use uhd_usrp_probe to find my usrp it didn't work. Then I uninstalled uhd with the command: "apt-get purge uhd uhd*" and GNU Radio got removed too. After this I installed uhd by the command:
apt-get install -t 'lsb release-cs' uhd from the Ettus repositories and so UHD started to work properly. So I'm in doubt if I can go on the deploy without GNU Radio. So does OpenBTS needs GNU Radio to work?
So to answer the question you ask in the last sentence: "does OpenBTS need GNURadio to work" - the answer is no. Modern OpenBTS can use UHD directly to talk to various USRP's (including the B100), and does not require GNURadio.
To provide some historical context here: OpenBTS was never built to use GNURadio for any of the signal processing portions of its internals, however, back in the day OpenBTS relied on the libusrp1/libusrp2 libraries that were present within the GNURadio repository to talk to USRP1's and USRP2's respectively. I believe this mechanism is still supported within OpenBTS, however libusrp1/libusrp2 no longer exist in modern releases of GNURadio. In addition, they can not be used to control a B100 (libusrp1 only supports the USRP1, and libusrp2 only supports the USRP2, both products that are considered rather old at this point, and the USRP2 in particular is no longer sold). Point being, the only way OpenBTS can use GNURadio is with a very old release of GNURadio (i.e. one unlikely to be installed in any modern distribution). And more to the point, it would not use GNURadio to talk to a B100.