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Infinite possibilities...

Problem

Need for flexible and powerful small-form factor platform in developing cognitive radio system.

univerSity of utah develoPS firSt-reSPonder cognitive radio SyStem


The Wireless Communications Lab at the University of Utah is an active player in the fields of software-defined radio, cognitive radio, filter bank multicarriers, MIMO and CDMA detection, as well as ad hoc networks. The SDR group of the laboratory is composed of a multidisciplinary team of graduates and undergraduates who work on the physical layer, MAC layer, and cross layer designs of cognitive radios.

Solution
Use three SFF SDR DPs from Lyrtech to implement a cognitive audio transceiver capable of sensing.

Problem
The SDR group is implementing a cognitive radio system targeting disaster first-response teams. In disaster situations such as the violent wildfires in South California in October, 2007 communications infrastructures are often rendered useless, forcing first-response teams to turn to wireless links to communicate. Often, however, this generates cluter termed spectrum access obstacles where cognitive radio technology offers bright promises. From a users perspective, a cognitive radio network operates in the same manner as a typical wireless network. Cognitive radio nodes, however, are designed to be aware of other user spectrums, efficiently avoiding interfering with them. A cognitive radio network thus made to coexist, in a given portion of the spectrum, with the legacy devices to which the spectrum is assigned.

reSultS
Development time saved Won award at SDR show

Solution
The SDR group at the University of Utah was selected to develop a cognitive radio solution for disaster situations as part of the SDR Forums Smart Radio Challenge 07. Lyrtechs Small Form Factor Software-defined Radio Development Platform (SFF SDR DP) was selected in an attempt at implementing a cognitive radio network. The SFF SDR DP designed around the TMS320DM6446 digital media processor (DMP) system-on-chip (SoC) from Texas Instruments and Virtex-4 SX35 FPGA from Xilinx offers programmers the flexibility of targeting different silicon devices according to their functionalities. The FPGA and DSP on the digital processing module are used to implement signal processing algorithms, while the ARM9 core is used to run the real-time operating system, MAC layer, and overall system control. Signal processing tasks are divided between the FPGA and DSP, based on the availability of computational resources and extra functionalities offered by Texas Instruments and Xilinx.

Cognitive radio demonstration system

During the first stage of development, two SFF SDR DPs were used to implement a cognitive audio transceiver. The transceiver looks for available spectrum channels through a filter-bank sensing method, superior to FFT-based methods in terms of spectral dynamic range. If a legacy user is detected on the carrier in use, the cognitive system moves to an unoccupied part of the spectrum.

Infinite possibilities...

Problem

reSultS
Lyrtechs SFF SDR DP proved very useful in the implementation of a cognitive radio system. The baseband-to-RF platform offered the SDR group powerful processing modules saved developers precious time they could spend developing, rather than mucking around signal processing tasks. The system ultimately developed by the SDR group was presented at SDR Forums 2007 Software Defined Radio Technical Conference and Product Exposition. The related paper Implementation of a Cognitive Radio Modem by Peiman Amini, Ehsan Azarnasab, Salam Akoum, Xuehong Mao, Harsha Rao, and Behrouz Farhang-Boroujeny received the best paper award at the conference. The University of Utah team was invited along with five other teams to participate in the 2008 Smart Radio Challenge, where the SFF SDR DP will be used in an automated spectrum mapping application.

Need for flexible and powerful small-form factor platform in developing cognitive radio system.

Solution
Use three SFF SDR DPs from Lyrtech to implement a cognitive audio transceiver capable of sensing.

reSultS
Development time saved Won award at SDR show

System implementation:ARM, DSP, FPGA processing partition

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