gnuradio Guide

8/10/2019 gnuradio Guide

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GNU RadioA Free Software Defined Radio

Eric Blossom [email protected]

Blossom Research +1 831 917 3428

798 Lighthouse Ave., Suite 109

Monterey, CA 93940 USA


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GNU Radio

Thought for the day

The milk of disruptiveinnovation doesnt flow from

cash-cows.

David S. Isenberg


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GNU Radio

Overview

Software defined radio

Free (open source) software

GNU Radio

Software ATSC receiver


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GNU Radio

What is software defined radio?

Get the software close to the antenna

Software definesthe waveforms

Replace analogsignal processing withdigital signal processing


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GNU Radio

Why SDR?

Flexibility

Quicker time to market

Multiple personalities (chameleon)

New things are possible:

Multiple channels at the same time

Better spectrum utilization

Cognitive radios


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GNU Radio

Current SDR users

Military Consolidating a stack of radios

Bridging between radio networks

Cellular base stations

Avoid fork lift upgrades Multiple standards on same system

New features to market quicker


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GNU Radio

Emerging SDR uses

Personal communication devices

Cellular / Paging / Wireless LAN(s)

PC based generic transceiver Radio / TV

Emerging unlicensed RF band apps


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GNU Radio

What is free software?

Free as in liberty

User has access to the source

User is free to modifyand is encouragedto contribute the modifications back to thecommunity

A cultureof innovation Various licenses: GNU General Public

License (GPL), Mozilla, Artistic License.


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GNU Radio

Who uses free software?

World wide community of users

Publicly traded companies support or

distribute free software: IBM, Red Hat,Mandrake

Linux

Apache web server

Not a fringe activity


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GNU Radio

What is GNU Radio?

Its a free software defined radio

A platform for experimentingwith

digital communications

A platform for signal processingoncommodity hardware


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GNU Radio

Vision

Transmit and receive any signal

Create a practical environmentfor

experimentation & product delivery

Expand the free software ethicintowhat were previously hardware

intensive arenas


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GNU Radio

What H/W is required?

Commodity PC

RF front end (e.g., TV tuner module)

Multi-channel applications / wide B/W:

High speed A/D (2025 Msamples/sec)

Single channel / narrow bandwidth:

SoundBlaster, AC97 codec, etc.


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GNU Radio

SDR ATSC receiver is practical!

Commodity PC:

Dual processor Athlon 1800+ MP

512 MB RAM / 120 GB disk

$1300

Can do:

6 * 10^9 integer ops / sec 4 * 10^9 FIR filter taps / sec


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GNU Radio

ATSC computational

requirements 1080i TSP decode takes about of a

single CPU

Nave equalizer: about 2.5 * 10^9 taps/s Smart s/w version: about 0.6 * 10^9 taps/s

Viterbi decoder: 10^6 decisions / sec.

Highly amenable to SIMD implementation

Short constraint length


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GNU Radio

Moores Law is on our side

Even if were off by a little bit, within 3years well have 4 times the

performance for the same money. General purpose hardware gets faster

by itself (Intel, AMD, etc take care of it).

ASICs dont get faster by themselves. Even a die shrink is expensive & timeconsuming


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GNU Radio

Open source hardware too!

General purpose SDR PCI peripheral: Tuner module $20

25 Msample/sec A/D converter $12 Spartan II FPGA (100k gates) $18

Misc analog, SRAM, etc $10

PWB $10

Assembly & Test $10

Total cost to manufacture: $80


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GNU Radio

GNU Radio resources

Home page (links to source code)http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio

Mailing [email protected]

Archivehttp://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio

Open source hardware http://www.opencores.org/projects/pci

PCI bridges, ethernet, memory controllers, etc.


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GNU Radio

Questions?

Documents

gnuradio Guide