Hardware ( analog components ) vs Software Radio(

reconfigurable processors)
Part of the computer network
• Physical Layer The layer within the wireless protocol in which
processing of RF, IF, or baseband signals including channel coding
occurs. It is the lowest layer of the ISO 7-layer model as adapted for
wireless transmission and reception.
• Data Link Layer The protocol responsible for reliable frame
transmission over a wireless link through the employment of proper
error detection and control procedures and medium access control.
frequency- and bandwidth-flexible RF design.

• For moderate bandwidths at which ADC and DAC can be accomplished

inexpensively, baseband operations can be efficiently performed in DSP. T
• These digital algorithms are independent of the passband over which
communication eventually occurs, and are amenable to a variety of low-
cost implementations, including very large scale integrated circuits (VLSI),
field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), and general purpose DSP engines.
• With the advent of universal HW device, the SDE concept integrates these
areas into one unified approach and is causing a change in design paradigm
of microwave and RF telecommunications systems and measurement
equipment
An Ideal SDR

single piece of hardware for multi-standard, multi-band and multi-functional wireless systems
Modern transceiver implementation (SDR)
• Shifting to software: see interesting applications of SDR ( UAV/ Drones)
• most of the tasks before used to be performed in hardware, eventually
conferring to the system a large degree of flexibility, compactness and
reliability.
• all the information carried in a real-valued passband signal is contained in a
corresponding complex-valued baseband signal.
• we can now implement complicated signal processing algorithms digitally
on complex baseband signals, keeping the analog processing of passband
signals to a minimum
• Transceiver design is thus independent of the physical frequency band that
is ultimately employed for communication. Most of the intelligence is
moved to baseband processing
Spectrum of Complex envelope
• The spectrum has a lowpass characteristic and its bandwidth B is the
half of that of the RF bandpass signal.
• The frequency region about zero frequency is covered by the
spectrum of complex envelope and referred to as baseband.
• In case of equivalent baseband signal processing the required
sampling rate is determined by B, i.e., by the half of RF bandwidth.
• The digital processing of slowly varying complex envelope requires
only a low sampling rate
The software defined electronics approach

• signal processing is implemented in SW, consequently, one algorithm

can demodulate the received signal, while other algorithms, run
parallel, can determine the spectrum of received signal or plot the
constellation diagram without interrupting the data.
• With advent of universal HW device, the SDE concept integrates and
is causing a change in design paradigm of microwave and RF
telecommunications systems and measurement equipment
 SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIOS :
• SDR : Radio in which some or all of the physical layer functions are software
defined
• CE representation is widely used in SDR and computer simulations of signals and
systems.
• Quadrature Modulator concept also used in all modern Vector Signal Generators
and Vector Signal Analysers ( I/Q to RF or RF to I/Q)
• complex envelope is an alternative baseband version of the passband signal
demanding lower sampling rates.
• This lower sampling rates in turn reduces the computational burden, speeding up
simulations and making it feasible and fast the digital signal processing tasks that
are necessary to build SDRs.
• In the SDR framework, the in-phase and Q- phase being baseband signals, allow
for efficient processing in the digital domain, via (DSPs), field programmable gate
arrays (FPGAs) or computers
Digital communications uses complex modulation to “double” the data rate for a given signal bandwidth, ultimately
using sine and cosine as an orthogonal basis in order to transmit independently on the in-phase and q-pahse

The real and imaginary components of complex envelope are

denoted by xI (t ) and xQ( t) , respectively.
Note, both of them are real-valued signals.
the complex envelope is not a real- but a complex-valued function

Extract CE from an RF bandpass signal to be processed

Reconstruct the RF bandpass signal from its CE.

The SDR Modulator and Demodulator

transmitter encodes information into the

complex baseband waveform using encoding,
modulation and filtering performed using
digital signal processing (DSP). The complex
baseband waveform is then upconverted to the
corresponding passband signal to be sent on
the channel.

, the passband received waveform is

downconverted to complex baseband by
the receiver, followed by DSP operations
for synchronization, demodulation, and
decoding.
USRP based SDR
• the HW and SW components can be fully separated and the same HW, referred to
as a universal HW device, can be used to implement very different applications
• cheap integrated circuits now can perform the transformation between the RF
domain and baseband.
• (USRPs) can implement any physical layer (OFDM, MIMO, LTE etc )
• different radio transceivers and test equipment can be implemented by means of
the same universal RF HW device in the 2.4-GHz ISM frequency band
• USRP devices are suitable for embedded operation and can be driven directly
from a suitable software run in the application layer
• The USRP devices are universal in that sense that together with a host computer
they can perform any kinds of RF bandpass signal processing, consequently, they
are suitable for the implementation of any kinds of telecommunications systems
USRP INTERNAL HARDWARE
GNU Radio
• In GNU Radio, a variety of C++ libraries modeling different digital
communications and digital signal processing algorithms are
integrated together using Python and SWIG (a software development
tool that connects programs written in C and C++ with a variety of
high-level programming languages including Python).
• These libraries are produced by the open-source community and
freely shared with everyone.