Title: Abstract

College College of Engineering, Architecture and Fine Arts

Proponent Cueto, Khryzz Lyden G.

Hilario, Claudette Jane C.
Macasaet, Rhojine Niño M.
Santos, Ricky Mae V.

Program Bachelor of Science in Electronics Engineering Major in Microelectronics

Proposed Title
FPGA Based Radio Transceiver using Television Whitespace for Rescue Operation

Rationale

Annually, an average of 20 tropical cyclones enter the Philippine Area of

Responsibility (PAR) and approximately 900 earthquakes are recorded (Bollettino et al.,
2020). Some of these disasters greatly bring significant threat to people, especially the poor
ones who are limited in their ability to prepare and plan for disaster impacts as well as in
responding because of their lowest capacity. Despite having a functioning Disaster Risk
Reduction Management (DRRM) mechanism, the government’s response was found reactive
rather than proactive, inefficient, ineffective, and too slow in making a move (DISASTER
MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN THE PHILIPPINES: AN ASSESSMENT COMMISSION
ON AUDIT, n.d.). During such crises, the significance of communication became an integral
part in all aspects of disaster response management as it is vital in continuous exchange of
changes, improvements, and situation detoriations among authorities. Thus, this became an
eye-opener to both Filipinos especially to the government to improve its plan in DRRM.

NDRRMC is the agency for disaster risk reduction that is responsible in preparing and
responding to natural calamities in the Philippines, and in ensuring the protection and welfare
of the people in times of disaster (DISASTER MANAGEMENT PRACTICES IN THE
PHILIPPINES: AN ASSESSMENT COMMISSION ON AUDIT, n.d.). One way of
implementing this is by distributing information through short messaging service (SMS)
wherein the telecommunications service provider will send a free alert about a disaster coming
from the NDRRMC so that the people can prepare immediately and prevent major casualties.
However, for some instances the disadvantages of implementing this still occur to others.
According to the article by Sofia Tomacruz about the issues regarding the emergency mobile
warnings of NDRRMC, some citizens have experienced receiving delayed warnings. Stated by
NDRRMC, generally, two types of message broadcast systems are used to send alerts, through
SMS and cell broadcast service (CBS). Compared to SMS, CBS is faster since it can send
messages to cell phones based on the location of the subscriber, but unfortunately, some
mobile phones are not supported by this feature and there are still no ways on how to fix these
delayed messages (Tomacruz, S., 2018). The fact that some of the people may be unaware of
what is happening around them may also affect their response to a disaster.

In the assessment report by Commission on Audit (COA) (n.d), they, too, inferred that
the catastrophic devastation brought by Typhoon Yolanda is what exposed the shortcomings of
the government in terms of disaster management and response. Not only was there a lack of
interaction between the civilians and the providers but also the proper communication of risks
is not properly done. An example of this shortcoming, a research on Governance
Communication for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM), a municipality in
Iloilo lacked communication facilities, preparation, and trained communication personnel. In a
section of the said assessment report, it was stated that it’s a necessity to improve risk
communication and emphasized that more lives could have been spared had they’ve properly
communicated the nature of the storm surge in the wake of the typhoon (Becodo, 2015).

For the reasons stated above, the researchers have found motivation to explore a way
to relieve the barriers of communication during times of disasters. From thorough deliberation
of the situation, the researchers have concluded that the country must focus on a better way to
communicate with the civilians during and after recovery and rescue operations. Aligned with
this, the researchers would like to explore the vast unassigned TV White Space spectrum in its
application in designing a disaster proof radio transceiver using Field-programmable Gate
Array (FPGA) for rescue operation which is also low cost and could be used as a means of
communication tool designed to work well despite interferences.

State-of-the-art/Literature Review

Conceptual Literature
a. Radio Transceiver
Communication has always been a part of people’s everyday lives through verbal and
non-verbal processes. However, when the industrial revolution occurred, it led to the discovery
of electronic communication systems. This communication system which is basically
composed of a transmitter, medium, and a receiver paved the way in extensively improving
human communication. In today’s era, wireless connection and communication are now also
part of the humans’ daily existence. These wireless capabilities are made possible by a
communication device known as the radio transceiver.
Generally, a transceiver incorporates a transmitter and a receiver in one package. Since
electronic communication is mostly two-way, both parties are required to include circuits for
sending and receiving (Frenzel Jr., 2014). Some of the examples of transceivers include
cellular phones, computer modems, handheld radios, and telephones. However, the mentioned
examples may use the transceivers differently because this component can operate in two
modes: full duplex and half duplex mode (McMachon, 2021). During full-duplex mode, both
parties are allowed to talk at the same time since the transmitter and receiver work on different
frequencies to avoid interference. This kind of mode is usually utilized in cellular phones. On
the other hand, half-duplex mode is used in radio systems like citizens band (CB) radio. This
allows them to communicate in both directions but not at the same time. Moreover, CB radio
grants a two-way radio communication which can be useful in rescue operations during and
after a disaster.
In India, two-way radios have been instituted ever since a typhoon struck the country
in July 2013 (n.a., 2014). The lack of communication during the disaster taught them to be
prepared for emergency communication and radio systems became their solution.
Furthermore, radio systems can operate in different frequencies depending on the distance and
the licenses offered in a country. Given that, a very high frequency (VHF) and high frequency
(HF) radio systems can be employed. VHF radio systems are commonly used to communicate
5-10 km from towns to the base station, more so, mobile vehicles can communicate up to 25
km and the VHF base stations can reach up to 100 km using a special antenna fitted (CARE,
2017). On the contrary, HF radio systems are applied for long-range communications about 50
km and can also cross international borders (CARE, 2017). Typically, radios are used to
communicate at work, but this can be useful too in times of emergency.

b. Television Whitespace
In distant wireless communications, frequency bands took a large role in transferring
data from one point to another. The frequency bands are clustered bands from the radio
spectrum. Each frequency has their distinct use and physical characteristics. Frequency bands
are considered as a natural resource since the electromagnetic spectrum is a part of the
environment surrounding the space. The radio spectrum is utilized by different sectors that
need wireless telecommunication. It could be for mobile, amateur radio, AM-FM radio,
television, aviation, or nautical communications. It is known that frequency bands are divided
by its specific purposes. Among a set of frequencies for applications, there is a range of
frequencies that is unoccupied where no telecommunication system is using. This may be
referred to as the TV Whitespace. TV Whitespace occupies the frequency band of around
54MHz and 806 MHz, within the UHF and VHF range (DICT, 2014).
TV White Space (TVWS) Spectrum is the spectrum of unassigned or unoccupied
frequency located between broadcast channels between UHF and VHF range around 54
MHz-806 MHz. This spectrum provides an extensive beneficial application for improving
communication in terms of radio broadcast, broadband internet and wireless communications.
In the Philippines there has been a large deployment of TVWS in rural areas where the pilot
testing happened after the Bohol Earthquake and Typhoon Yolanda has heavily impacted the
country’s economy and communities. This testing was posed to provide communication reliefs
and alleviate disaster efforts (DICT, 2014) .
In times of disaster, communication during and after is pertinent for effective rescue
and recovery plan implementation. Most communication devices and means during these
times require frequency mediums that could reach the rural areas without interfering with or
occupying other frequency communication mediums. It is for this purpose that the TV White
Space (TVWS) spectrum is being deliberated for implementation in wireless applications such
as internet and radio communication devices; especially in the case of today’s modernized
communities where internet is the basic tool for reaching for and extending help for the
civilians and radio transmitters are for communication between authorized rescuers.

c. Software Defined Radio

Software radio was a term by Joe Mitola III wherein radios of this type are
reconfigurable and reprogrammable through the use of a powerful software without altering
the hardware (Reed, 2002). In modern settings, this term encompasses a broad definition that
involves softwares and radios that may lead to misunderstanding of the real description of the
device. The term Software-defined Radio’s core description by Di pu et.al (2018) states that
SDRs utilizes software processing to implement operational functions wherein the physical
layer is defined. The definition is not far from Mitola’s but the addition of the word ‘defined’
in the term established its difference from the other software radios. This is because a radio
device may use software for selection of parameters to be manipulated; however, this radio is
not software-defined, but is software-controlled.
The physical layers being defined through a software means that all hardware
operations such as signal processing, channel selection, tuning, mixing, modulation, and
demodulation cannot be performed when the signals are in analog. Thus, before processing,
the intelligence must first be converted to digital signals in which ADCs and DACs play
pertinent roles (Sinha, Verma and Kumar, 2016). This is where digital signal processing
presents its importance and makes this wireless communication device different from
hardware intensive radios. In hardware radios, the operational functions of the radio are not
easily changeable because they are constituted with components that do not have much
flexibility. On the other hand, software-defined radios are composed of a front-end hardware
and digital processing unit/ digital signal processor (DSP) where the operation of the radio’s
physical layer is being programmed (Haldren III, 2014). The DSP of the radio is what
performs much of the operations previously stated. DSP can be implemented using various
devices - notably for this work, a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).
FPGA is a device that is highly configurable depending on the required functionality of
the system being implemented which can be coded using hardware description languages
(HDL) such as VHDL and Verilog. Verilog is used in designing logic circuitry and verification
while VHDL is mostly for Very High-Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC) (HardwareBee,
2019). FPGA can implement highly user-defined operations like conversions, signal
processing and filtration easily through configurable logic blocks because of its powerful
computational proficiency. This makes this device suited for implementation of the operations
of the physical layer of an SDR.

Related Studies
a. Foreign Works/ Studies
A study by Osman, Mustafa and Taha (2016) presented a characterization and the
design process of a software defined radio. Specifically, the researcher implemented the radio
in an FPGA using hardware co-simulation method. The radio design is initially modeled using
the MATLAB/SIMULINK interface. It is used as their programming platform in order to
initialize the design of blocks necessary for a software defined radio.

Figure 1: SDR Model in Xilinx

The model shown above includes three main blocks: FIR compiler, DDS compiler and
the CIC compiler. The FIR compiler gives the required RF signal that is taken from a sine
wave that represents the signal to be transmitted. The DDS compiler on the other hand will be
the variable needed so that the RF signal from the FIR compiler will be limited down to IF
band with respect to FPGA’s hardware limitation. The resulting IF signal is then converted to a
digital stream of data and processed in a cascaded integrator comb filter. The CIC yields the
output with a sampling rate that is defined within the CIC filter. The discrete-time signal shall
not be able to accommodate an output rate greater than 20bits hence a converter is used. A
delay block is used to let the results appear one cycle later and this makes the spectrum and
vector scopes easily characterize the signal.

The design process used in this work includes hardware co-simulation. It is done by
simulating the model in FPGA platform along with the hardware where the actual software
defined radio will be designed and integrated. A system generator is used to execute the
process. An HDL code is used for the radio configuration as well as the HDL test bench to
compare and match the purely model simulation and the hardware co simulation. The project
is built in Xilinx Synthesis Technology platform which directly programs the HDL code to the
FPGA hardware. The radio design implemented only supports one-way communication and
can be even improved to provide an additional system to make it a radio transceiver that
allows two way communication. The hardware co-simulation has a promising contribution in
the design process of the FPGA based radio transceiver.

Aside from that, another study was conducted by Guruvenkata and Ismail (2011)
which focuses on proposing a system level transceiver architecture wireless device operating
in TV whitespaces and providing a tentative block for the proposed architecture. In this study,
the researchers considered the regulatory rules set by the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) and other commissions worldwide in utilizing TV whitespace spectrum
for radios. However, the provisions are too technical for a medium access control (MAC) and
specifically in the physical layer where the proposed architecture was based. For that reason,
they also considered the system level specifications of the European Computers
Manufacturing Association (ECMA) – 392 for a medium access control (MAC) layer and
physical layer to carry out the proposed radio transceiver architecture.
 Figure 2. System Level Transceiver Architecture Model in SystemVue

The figure above shows the system level transceiver architecture that is divided into
three, transmitter, receiver and switch for duplexing. In the architecture, a switch is used to
separate the transmitter and the receiver. The ECMA-392 set the requirements for the
transmitter and the receiver. The symbol cloak and the center frequency must be derived from
the same clock for synchronization. 20 ppm is the allowed tolerance for the clock; thus, a
tuning range oscillator of 180 MHz must be set for the TV whitespace device.

Basically, the transmitter is implemented using a heterodyne structure since it is a

homodyne transmitter. In contrast to that, the receiver was carried through a homodyne
structure. Then, for duplexing, the time division duplexing (TDD) was used instead of the
frequency division duplexing (FDD) because it introduced higher insertion loss that can affect
the efficiency of the transceiver. This system level architecture was implemented in
SystemVue, an EDA environment for electronic system-level (ESL) which is used in
innovating physical layers of the next generation wireless and aerospace communication
systems (Keysight, n.d.). The system was simulated with a single channel with a center
frequency of 521 MHz, but the baseband data processing was not implemented completely
since it only focused on testing the performance of the RF front end.

Though this study provides information regarding TV white spaces and radio
transceivers, the gaps and disadvantages in implementing a transceiver architecture are
discussed by the researchers. Here, the major disadvantage is the signal leakage in self mixing
due to the LO leakage and the transceiver performance was only examined for only one
channel and a modulation scheme. Thus, this paper proposes an SDR transmitter and SDR
receiver that will use digital up converter (DUC) and digital down converter (DDC)
respectively.

b. Local Works/ Studies

TV White Space has been used to provide communication for disaster management in
the Philippines. It was initially used to provide Internet connectivity to help municipalities
affected by earthquakes in 2013 and installation of radio transmitters has helped in providing
services on emergencies and relief operations (Carpio, 2015). The growth of TWVS
connectivity has benefitted Philippines in disaster management but a lot of consideration is
needed especially the protection of primary user’s channels when the whitespace devices were
used.

Despite keeping progress on TVWS communication, there was limited information

concerning where TVWS could possibly operate. A study is conducted to develop a
geolocation database of Cebu that would provide information on the estimated available
licensed TV channels and identified areas where TVWS is available in Cebu. Using
IEEE802.11af devices or white space devices (WSD) and ITU-R P.1546 which is a
recommended separation distance of WSD to licensed TV channels, the service contour and
keep – out distance of licensed channel were estimated. As mentioned, ITU-R P.1456 has
helped realise the keep – out distance where WSD could operate better without interference on
primary users. Based on the developed geolocation database of Cebu, the northern and
southern end of the province has more available TVWS and has a bigger chance of TVWS
implementation in rural areas (Pilapil and Bañacia, 2019). This study has helped in
determining how WSD could work in the Philippines and has given an idea on the location for
possible implementation of TVWS that could protect the services of licensed TV channels.

Research Question, Aim/Objectives and Sub-goals

1. How to design a radio transceiver that can utilize the unused TV whitespace without
affecting licensed spectrum resources?
 2. How would the researchers implement the complex analog circuit integration of a radio
transceiver in FPGA?

The main research objective is to design a radio transceiver using FPGA to provide a
stable and reliable communication system mainly for but not limited to emergency response
during disasters. This goal can be achieved by the following:

1. Examine the coexistence of licensed spectrum resource and unlicensed TV white space
2. Determine techniques to utilize VHF and UHF band of TV White Space on a radio
transceiver
3. Apply the standard specifications for devices that operate on TV White Space

Theoretical Framework
Summarizes the variables and concepts with their corresponding interconnection to
develop an FPGA-Based Whitespace Radio Transceiver.
 A radio transceiver is used mainly for a two way communication system which can be
either full or half duplex. In this work, the radio transceiver will be designed using hardware
description language where specifically an FPGA will be programmed to satisfy the working
principle of a radio transceiver implemented as SDR. The radio to be designed is set to be used
along the frequency bands along the television whitespace. This work directly aims to design
an FPGA base radio transceiver that uses television whitespace as medium.
An existing FPGA based radio was designed by Osman, Mustafa and Taha (2016). It
introduces a one way communication radio that is implemented using FPGA board rather than
designing complex analog circuits such as blenders, channels, enhancers,
modulators/demodulators and such. In line with that, the team decided to create a framework
that revolves around a radio transceiver and a software defined radio platform. Furthermore,
another study was discussed that tackles the design of a radio transceiver that utilizes the
frequency bands along the unused frequencies or the television whitespace.
 A radio transceiver architecture was implemented by Guruvenkata and Ismail (2011) for
wireless devices operating in TV white spaces. This shows that TV whitespaces are possible to
be used in implementing a radio transceiver. As mentioned, TV whitespaces are unused
frequencies, thus it provides basic information regarding the rules and provisions created by
different commissions in terms of using television whitespaces for a radio transceiver.

Methodology
This section provides the initial design plan on a half duplex radio transmitter in FPGA.
The frequencies by which the wireless communication will occupy will be along the frequency
range of the unused frequency bands or the television whitespace. Furthermore, the block
diagram illustrated in the following discussion only shows a basic block diagram of an SDR
and further revisions and improvement will be added for a better FPGA whitespace radio
design.

Figure 3: SDR Transmitter Block Diagram

An SDR transmitter diagram is illustrated above. The signal to be transmitted is
originally a digital baseband sample. The baseband samples were processed in the digital
signal processing block and will then go through the DUC or the Digital Up Converter block.
The signal has to be transmitted in analog RF signal form. Originally the signal should be
directed at the digital mixer. However, the digital information from the DSP block is sampled
at a very low sampling rate and usually around Fs/N where N is the sampling divider that will
also be used in the receiver block diagram. The interpolation filter will boost the baseband
sample frequency to the required mixer input which is Fs. The interpolation filter increases the
sampling frequency by a factor N also known as the interpolation factor. The digitized signal
now has more samples and its frequency can now be processed in the digital mixer along with
the local oscillator. The mixer will translate the baseband digital signal into digital IF samples.
The digital IF samples can now be processed in a digital to analog converter block where the
digitized signal will be converted to analog IF signal then the signal is converted to RF
frequencies using the RF upconverter block. In order to minimize losses in wireless
transmission, the analog RF signal is amplified then transmitted through the antenna.

Figure 4: SDR Receiver Block Diagram

Figure 4 shows the most basic block diagram of a software defined radio receiver. The
receiver takes an analog RF signal that will be initially processed in an RF Tuner wherein the
signal is converted into an analog IF signal through the process of signal mixing. The process
is similar to that of a superheterodyne receiver where the mixer outputs two signals with
distinct frequency which are the sum and difference of the incoming signal and the local
oscillator provided in the RF Tuner. The analog IF signal should be around 10.7MHz signal
then will pass through an ADC where the analog IF signal is converted to digital stream of
data or digital samples. The digital samples will then go to the DDC or the digital down
converter. The digital mixer takes the digital IF samples and converts it to a digital baseband
sample. Digital baseband sample is the digital IF with frequency is even lowered down to
approximately 0MHz. This process is essential as most software defined hardware have
limited capabilities in processing high frequency digital signals. The lowpass filter to be used
is an FIR filter where it limits the bandwidth and further acts as a decimating filter. Since the
output of FIR is band limited then the sampling rate can be lowered by N samples. This
process is called decimation where the baseband samples were taken every N signal samples.
The advantage of using a decimated signal is that it can be transmitted at a lower rate and
stored in less memory.

Results, Outcome and Relevance

A Software-Defined Radio Half Duplex Radio Transceiver of heterodyne structure was
implemented using FPGA wherein an HDL Verilog was used. The transceiver was made to
operate between VHF and UHF frequency bands - specifically from 54 MHz to 806MHz -
within the unassigned Television White Space. The implemented SDR was simulated and the
results met all design requirements.
This work was expected to be relevant and helpful in providing a tool that would help in
the improvement of emergency response, especially in the communication aspect of DRRM.

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TOPIC EVALUATION COMMITTEE
The topic abstract has been thoroughly reviewed by the Topic Evaluation Committee

Signature Remarks