Software Defined Radio
Chandrakant Sharpa
SRMRI, Bangalore
Outline
Current Scenario
Software Defined Radio
SDR @ SRMRI
Our Proposals
Wireless Infrastrature and Ad-hoc
Communication Networks
Global mobile standards : 2G(GSM), 3G(WCDMA), 4G-LTE(OFDM)
Wireless standards : WiMax, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, IEEE
802.11a,b,g,n,p
Digital Terrestrial TV Broadcasting System: DAB, DVB, DMB
Intelligent Transport System : ETC, DSRC, CAR LAN
Home Network : ADSL, FTTH, Wireless USB
Wireless PAN : WPAN over UWB, IEEE802.15.3a, 3c
Sensor Network : RFIDTag, Zigbee, IEEE802.15.4a
Multistandard mobiles system eg. Software GPS, FM-Radio
Machine to Machine communication
Dependable Healthcare communication
And many more.
Current Hardware Defined Radio
Complicated dedicated hardware- expensive to develop
Very limited flexibility- static construction
Total reconstruction necessary in order to add or change
functionality- new hardware chip
High analog complexity & high sensitivity of RF
interference
Analog power, size and weight scales with number of
channels - expensive
Traditional Hardware Defined Radio(HDR)
Need
Goal : design a flexible and open architecture
suitable for a variety of different wireless access
technologies.
Solution : Software Defined Radio [SDR]
Reconfigurable Radio System
Courtesy : NICT
SDR History
Software Radio' was coined in 1984 by a team at
the Garland Texas Division of E-Systems Inc.
(now Raytheon),
"Software Defined Radio" was coined in 1991 by
Joseph Mitola
First public software radio initiatives was a
U.S. military project named SpeakEasy
Software Radio in Tiers
Tier 0 : Hardware Radio
No software changes
Tier 1 : Software Controlled Radio
Require multiple hardware transceivers
Software controls to choose transceiver
Tier 2 : Software Defined Radio
employs software to control various modulation
techniques
Tier 3 : Ideal Software Radio
Programmability extended to RF section
What is Software Defined Radio(SDR)?
SDR transforms radio hardware problems to software
problems
Goal is to have software and algorithms as close to
antenna as possible
The software, instead of hardware, defines the
transmitted waveforms and demodulates the received
waveforms.
Basically,
New broadband SDR
Generic hardware commerical-of-the-self (COTS)
Unlimited flexibility and completely programmable
Highly reusable software code for new and reconfigured
radio systems
Low analog complexity & less sensitive for RF
interference
Analog power, size and weight is constant and
independent of number of channels
Broadband Software Defined Radio
SDR Characteristics
Flexibility
Reconfigurable and Adaptable : reconfigurable and/or
specially designed radio solutions which is impractical with
traditional HDR technology
Recyclable : Algorithms can easily be recycled and integrated in
different configurations for new radio-applications which speed up
new implementation
Bridge between theory and practice :
New algorithms and systems can much more easily be tested and
evaluated in real radio systems rather than with simulations only.
Very usable as an experiment platform
Reconfigurable radio with SDR is therefore gradually
replacing traditional HDR in many wireless system(like
LTE)
New technologies exploiting flexibility
in SDR
Reconfigurable Radio Systems(RRS) and Flexible Radio
Cognitive Radio(CR) & Dynamic Spectrum Access(DSA)
Decentralized, dynamic and dependable radio systems
Non Standardized ad-hoc systems
Over-the-air(OTA) Radio Share radio functionality
(software) through the air
Software Communication Architecture(SCA) SDR
open architecture framework for h/w & s/w
Joint Tactical Radio System(JTRS) next generation
speech-and-data radio for military purpose
SDR Pros and Cons
Pros
various modulation methods using a common set of hardware
Elimination of analog hardware and its cost
Ability to alter functionality just by software
possibility of adaptively choosing best suited operating frequency
Cons
difficulty of writing software for various target systems
Security
Initial cost
Power consumption
SDR Challenges
To achieve same efficiency as of purely hardware
solution
Dynamically handle the broad range of spectrum
Providing best efficient technology of radio
without involvement of user
Make network protocols adaptive to available
spectrum
Security
Our Research Focus
Proposals
Systematic study of Adaptability
SDR based system for heterogeneous networks
Remote Physical layer configuration
Plug-n-Play architecture for GNU Radio
Expectation from Collaboration
Guidance with respect to choosing projects,
direction of work
Suggestions from pure wireless
communication perspective
Output in terms of publications/patents
Email-id : [email protected]
