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Wireless Channel Sounding Using GNU Radio and USRP

Article · July 2012

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Channel Sounding Application using GNU Radio and
USRP2 based Software Radio Platform
Jay Prakash
Department Of Electronics Engineering
IIT-(BHU),Varanasi
Varanasi,India
jay.prakash.ece09@itbhu.ac.in
Lakshay Narula
Department Of Electronics Engineering
IIT-(BHU),Varanasi
Varanasi,India
lakshay.narula.ece10@itbhu.ac.in
Abstract— The prime endeavor of the paper is to develop
inexpensive and easy-to-use methods for measuring the channel
parameters. We choose Sliding window correlation based CIR
algorithm on GNU Radio platform which provided lots of ease at
configuration while testing channel parameters as modulations
schemes, bit rate, Symbol Rates etc could be varied on run and
receiver was informed of the same to get in sync. Final
application using 2 USRP2s(Rx and Tx) kept at varied corners of
lab room, corridors etc gave plots of channel response,
Coherence Bandwidth, and delay spread which was analyzed to
characterize channel parameters. The SDR platform was tested
using GNU-Companion blocks too and similar results were
observed.
This shows promising aspect of Software Radios for Channel
characterization and measurements primarily where cost and
easiness in configuration are concerned. The only challenge felt
for now was some hardware constraints in dealing with high
sampling rates.
Keywords-GNU Radio,USRP2,Channel Sounding,Coherence
Bandwidth,Delay spread,PN sequence
1. INTRODUCTION
Fundamentally, mobile, radio communication channels are
time varying, multipath fading channels. In a radio
communication system, there are many paths for a signal to
travel from a transmitter to a receiver. Sometimes there is a
direct path where the signal travels without being obstructed.
In most cases, components of the signal are reflected by the
ground and objects between the transmitter and the receiver
such as buildings, vehicles, and hills or refracted by different
atmospheric layers. These components travel in different paths
and merge at the receiver. Each path has a different physical
length. Thus, signals on each path suffer different transmission
Rohit Sharma
Department of Electronics and Communication
Engineering,NIT Trichy
Trichy,India
rohits0810@gmail.com
delays due to the finite propagation velocity. The
superposition of these signals at the receiver results in
destructive of constructive interference, depending on the
relative delays involved. The fact that the environment
changes as time passes leads to signal variation. This is called
time variant. Signals are also influenced by the motion of a
terminal. A short distance movement can cause an apparent
change in the propagation paths and in turn the strength of the
received signals.
The reliable operation of a wireless communication system is
dependent upon the propagation channel over which it
operates, as the channel is the primary contributor to many of
the problems and limitations that plague wireless
communication systems. Interfering signals, electromagnetic
noise, and signal multipath all combine to cause signal
distortion, severely limiting the performance of both analog
and digital communication systems. Multipath—a major
characteristic of most communication channels—is a
propagation phenomenon which results in signals reaching the
receiving antenna by two or more paths, creating constructive
and destructive interference as well as signal echoes.
Multipath is caused by reflection, diffraction, and scattering of
electromagnetic waves from various objects in the propagation
environment, and a simple example is illustrated.
The effects of multipath can manifest themselves in a variety
of ways. For example, in a commercial FM radio transmission,
multipath causes echoes to be heard in the audio signal; in a
Television transmission multipath causes “ghost” images to
appear on the screen. For a digital communication system,
multipath can be a limiting factor on the maximum data rate
that can be transmitted through the channel.
As a result channel becomes:-
1. Frequency dependent,
2. Time dependent and
3. Position dependent.
In a way it lead to
1. Rapid changes in signal strength over a small travel distance
or time interval.
2. Random frequency modulation due to varying Doppler
shifts on different multipath signals.
3. Time dispersion caused by multipath propagation delays.
2. COHERENCE BANDWIDTH AND CIR
It is basically range of frequencies over which the channel can
be considered flat (i.e. channel passes all spectral components
with equal gain and linear phase). It is a definition that
depends on RMS Delay Spread.
If we define Coherence Bandwidth (BC) as the range of
frequencies over which the frequency correlation is above 0.9,
then
1 1. Direct RF Pulse System
BC 
50
If we define Coherence Bandwidth as the range of frequencies
over which the frequency correlation is above 0.5, then this is
called 50% coherence bandwidth. 1
BC 
5
Coherence time is the time duration over which the channel
impulse response is essentially invariant. If the symbol period
of the baseband signal (reciprocal of the baseband signal
bandwidth) is greater the coherence time, than the signal will
distort, since channel will change during the transmission of
the signal.
Delay spread and Coherence bandwidth describe the time
dispersive nature of the channel in a local area.
Signal pulses are broadened in time as they travel through the
propagation channel. Delayed spread (Td) is the longest delay
among the multipath.
The impulse response is a wideband channel characterization
and contains all information necessary to simulate or analyze
any type of radio transmission through the channel. Impulse
response model actually is a linear filter with a time varying
impulse response.
t t
y (d , t )  x(t )  h(d , t )   x( )h(d , t   )d   x( )h(vt, t   )d
 
The variable t represents the time variations due to motion,
whereas  represents the channel multipath delays for a fixed
value of t.
Three methods of wideband channel sounding techniques
2. Spread Spectrum Sliding Correlator Channel
Sounding
3. Frequency Domain Channel Sounding
3. DESDIGN MODEL
This is the basic design flow diagram. Here we find out
averaged power delay profile and then analyze frequency
domain response for estimation of coherence bandwidth.

CIR (Channel Impulse Response)

A wireless propagation medium is, in general, a highly

dynamic environment, consisting of mobile users & scatterers, a  2
k k  P( )( k k )
 k
 k

a  P( )
varying terrain, and weather phenomena. Strictly speaking, 2
these channels are non- stationary in nature; however, they k k
k k
may be modeled as randomly time-variant linear filters, so
that the mathematical functions describing these channels
reduce to random processes. The transfer function
representation then allows the channels to be characterized
statistically, in addition to allowing them to be described by a    2   2

time-varying transfer function (impulse response).

a  2 2
k k  P( )( k
2
k )
 2
 k
 k

a k
2
k  P( ) k
k
 This flowchart clearly shows the processes at Host (Tx).Host
PC is using GNU RADIO and UHD driver for interfacing with
USRP2(used as Tx) which is connected through Ethernet
cable. We basically modified Digiutal_bert_tx.py code for
modulation and feeding in the sequences. We worked for
Transmitter Side Design Costs loop integration for further improvement in terms of
synchronization but it’s complexity required more efforts.
The PN codes are generated as per user feeds on fly and BPSK
modulated before being sent to USRP2 control ie
Uhd_transmitter.
After subsequent processing (interpolation, filtering etc.) and
up conversion the modulated pulses are transmitter by
antenna.

This is flow model of receiver side. The USRP2 (Rx receives

data and though the reception path as discussed earlier sends it
to the Host Pc. The data thus obtained is stored in file sink
through Digital_bert_rx.py interfaced with uhd_receiver.

After storage in the file sink as .dat file the data is read using
read_complex_to_binary.m as the received data is complex.

Then after it is handled to octave code which performs rest

processing on each window equal to length of PN Sequence.

Receiver Side Design

The Receiver side USRP2 down-converts the data and after

analog domain conversion handles control to FPGA based
processing.

The data compatible to be processed by host PC is sent

through Ethernet cable to the PC where rest processing is
carried on.
This model represents the basic data flow through octave code
which every window goes though same process. The binary
stream (after being read by read_complex_binary.m) stream is
correlated with locally generated PN Sequence of same length
as that of the the transmitted one which gives CIR. The CIR is
averaged and subsequently squared to get the power-delay
profile.
The frequency domain conversion of this profile(delayed
versions of power) gives a better visualization in terms of
frequency correlation function.
The range till where this is above 0.9 is taken as coherence
Bandwidth.
This model represents the processing on receiver
side(interfacing with GNU-RADIO using Uhd driver).We
modified Digital_bert_rx.py for our purpose.The data received
is demodulated and stream is converted in suitable format and
stored in local file. This is further used by octave codes.
Script’s flow of execution as shown above the flow chart
execution as sounder specifications is entered by the user.
4. CONCLUSION
Using 2 USRP2s(Rx+Tx) we were able to make Gnu-Radio
based channel Sounder which can measure channel
parameters. To add we made it quite handy and user friendly
where one can test it for multiple input parameters (PN
Sequence Length, Sampling Rate, Modulation Scheme etc)
and get detailed analysis of the channel parameters.
This is complete command line script where after establishing
connection between two devices one need to run one single
script on command line which will ask for inputs from user.
We got impulse responses of the channels both for LOS and
NLOS and worked on these data to get the coherence
bandwidth of the channel.
Channel Impulse Response LOS for 1023 length sequence
clearly show one major echo due to multipath.
De-noised CIR for same channel for better visualization.
Channel Impulse Response NLOS for 4095 length sequence
clearly showing multiple echo’s due to multipath.

Frequency Domain analysis of the channel response was

observed as frequency correlation function. Coherence
bandwidth can be reported at point where fcf plot drops till
0.9.
These plots show our observations for the channel. The
channel used was our lab environment. We placed Rx and Tx
at varied positions inside the lab and took multiple readings
for different modulation scheme and Sequence length.
Increasing the length invited interference after some time.1024
and 2045 length sequence was better to work with at the
sampling rate.
This application can be used to study channel at varied
frequencies(ISM Band) and little work in synchronization and
tests on better machines can give better results.
Power Delay Profile (PDF) of the channel at 4095 sequence 5. FUTURE WORKS
length. The lack of synchronization cause Sampling frequency
offset between 2 USRP2 devices .The master oscillator on the
USRP2 is a +/- 5PPM TCXO oscillator. Crystal oscillators
are imperfect, and they get closer to perfect the more you
spend on them. Which is why one generally uses an external
reference to move from 5PPM to 50PPB, using a GPSDO or
similar. One can take the 5PPM estimate and plug it into
calculations.

Sounder uses a simple O(N^2) serial correlator without

synchronization, the impulse response vectors are very
sensitive to timing offset between transmitter and receiver.
This results in the correlation peaks being separated by more
or less than the PN code length number of samples , and
makes it difficult to coherently add them to reduce noise.
Using an external frequency reference on both ends would
make a dramatic difference. For synchronizing both the
transmitter carrier frequency and phase also to the bit timing
for BPSK, GNU Radio has a readymade block to do each.

Carrier recovery/synchronization can be done with a Costas

Multiple Snap-Shots were taken to get averaged powed delay loop, which will track out any residual carrier resulting from
profile. The figure shows channel impulse at different instants not being tuned to exactly the center frequency of your pass
of time for similar condition (1023 length PN sequence). band. For symbol timing, there is a re-sampling block
implementing the Muller and Muller algorithm. This will early/prompt/late correlator and NCO-based PN code
track the "center of the bit" and fractionally resample to 1 generator.
sample per symbol. This is a common enough combination
that there is a combined block to do both with less CPU
consumption and better SNR (gr.mpsk_receiver_cc). 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We owe thanks to SPANN LAB,IIT Bombay for the facilities
From there one can use a hard-decision slicer on the I channel, and USRP2 kits.
or implement your own more sophisticated algorithm based on
whether there is error coding or some other known property of
the transmit signal. 7. REFERENCES

1.
An example that implements all of the above (using separate
Costas and M&M blocks) may be found in the gnu radio- 2.
examples/python/digital-bert directory. This implements a
3.
continuous BPSK transmitter using a known, scrambled bit
sequence. The receiver performs filtering, synchronization, 4.
demodulation, retiming, bit slicing, and descrambling, then
5.
measures the bit error rate and estimates the receiver signal to
noise ratio. These values, plus the current frequency offset 6.
and timing offset, are displayed once per second.
A more sophisticated example is the digital packet radio that 7.
interfaces with the Linux TCP/IP stack, which may be found
in the python/digital directory. This combines a configurable
PHY later (bit rate, modulation technique, etc.) with a (very) 8.
simple CSMA MAC. This is harder to study, and the details 9.
of the DQPSK implementation are buried in another directory,
but it is full-fledged 2-way half-duplex 10. Multipath Interference Characterization in Wireless
radio link using GNU Radio.
http://gnuradio.wordpress.com/
http://www.funwithelectronics.com/?id=11
http://gnuradio.org/redmine/wiki/1/UsrpFAQIntroFPGA
http://james.ahlstrom.name/
http://www.oz9aec.net/index.php/gnu-radio
http://www.hs-
ulm.de/opus/volltexte/2010/27/pdf/SDR_GNURadio_USRP_Feb2
010.pdf Bachelor Thesis from HS Ulm on FM / GSM applications
http://search.gmane.org/?author=Johnathan+Corgan&sort=date,G
NU Radio, a free software defined radio
UHD DRIVER GUIDE Devin KellY, October 1st, 2011
Statistical multipath channel models
Communication Systems, Michael Rice ,BYU Wireless
Communications Lab

The Costas loop will compensate for carrier frequency/phase 11. A Low-Cost, Software-Based Radio Frequency Channel Sounder
offset, but will not compensate for timing offset. For the by Jordan Riggs
latter, you will also need to implement a coarse and fine
synchronization loop, using something like an

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