Demo: IIO Blocks for GNU Radio

Abstract

The Industrial Input / Output (IIO) framework has been in the upstream Linux kernels since 2011, and is responsible for handling sensors, converters, integrated transceivers and other real-world I/O devices. It provides a hardware abstraction layer with a consistent API for the user space applications. As of today, the IIO framework consists of approximatively 200 drivers, of which many handle multiple devices. It supports discrete components as well as integrated transceivers like the Analog Devices AD9361, a 2 x 2 RF Agile Transceiver, found in many SDR products. Recently, Analog Devices created several new blocks for GnuRadio that can be used to stream samples from and to high-speed IIO devices. Adding a few signal processing blocks, it becomes very easy to create complex applications such as LTE or IEEE 802.11g OFDM receivers, radar processing, or just simple applications like wide-band FM transceivers. This demo will focus on presenting the IIO blocks for GnuRadio; how they can be used, their functionalities, the controls they provide over the hardware. For this purpose, the demo will be a GnuRadio flowgraph that corresponds to a IEEE 802.11g (WiFi) packet sniffer, which has the advantage of showing a real-world use case of a fast (20 MHz sample rate) software defined radio application, while remaining relatively simple with only a handful of blocks.