Prototyping with SDR: A quick way to play with next-gen communications systems

Abstract

In this paper we present our approach regarding the implementation of new wireless radio receivers exploiting filterbank techniques, using a software-development driven approach. The fact that most of the common radio communication systems share a similar structure has been exploited to create a framework which provides a generic layout and tools to construct reconfigurable transmitters and/or receivers. By combining our own generic object-oriented framework built on top of the GNU Radio software framework with the use of the Universal Software Radio Peripheral version 2 (USRP2), we have been able to quickly implement a working proof of concept of an Uplink (UL) Filterbank Multicarrier (FBMC) receiver, both for Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) scenario, within the 7th European framework project called PHYDYAS. As well, a description of the methodology we have applied from software engineering in order to build this demonstrator is herein included, which shows the suitability of using Software Defined Radio (SDR) technologies for fast prototyping of new wireless communication systems.