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GNU Radio Basics and Setup Guide

This document provides an overview of GNU Radio and software-defined radios. It discusses getting the GNU Radio source code, typical radio signal processing paths, front-end components like mixers and filters, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and their sampling rates, the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) with its ADCs, digital-to-analog converters (DACs), and field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and concludes with a hardware summary of GNU Radio and the USRP.

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Xya Kharal
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189 views12 pages

GNU Radio Basics and Setup Guide

This document provides an overview of GNU Radio and software-defined radios. It discusses getting the GNU Radio source code, typical radio signal processing paths, front-end components like mixers and filters, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and their sampling rates, the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) with its ADCs, digital-to-analog converters (DACs), and field-programmable gate array (FPGA), and concludes with a hardware summary of GNU Radio and the USRP.

Uploaded by

Xya Kharal
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

GNU Radio Tutorial

Grace Woo

October 13, 2006

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


Getting Started

Getting the source code

Make sure you have all of the dependencies. Summarized at:


[Link]/wiki/tiki-view [Link]?blogId=3

Checkout the source code from svn with: svn co


[Link] gnuradio

in that directory and as root, do:


./bootstrap; ./configure
make; make check; make install

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


Basic Block Diagram

Typical RX path for a software radio:

Antenna -> Receive RF Front End -> ADC -> Software


Code

Typical TX path for a software radio:

Software Code -> DAC -> Transmit RF Front End ->


Antenna

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


Front End

Primary function is to translate modulated signal to baseband.

Low Noise Amplifer (LNA) -> Low Pass Filter (LPF) ->
Mixer -> LPF -> ADC -> Local Oscillator

Traditional analog radio design uses an Intermediate


Frequency and this basically emulates that.

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


Analog Digital Converter

Sampling Rate - Number of samples per second


Dynamic Range - Range between lowest and highest sample
value

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


The Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP)

Figure: USRP Block Diagram

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


USRP A/D Converters

4 - 12bit A/D Converters


64M samples/sec each (theoretically a 32MHz wide band)
42.66M samples/s, 32M samples/s ... also possible.
subrange of A/D is 2V peak to peak
Can use PGA to increase gain up to 20db before A/D if signal
is weak

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


USRP D/A Converters

4 - 14bit D/A Converters


128M samples/s each
This implies a 64 MHz bandwidth signal but to be safe, should
not attempt more than 50 MHz

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


USRP D/A, A/D Converters

Effectively, we have 4 input and 4 ouput channels


Usually use a complex signal input/output so 2 complex input
and 2 complex output
There is also onboard interpolation in the FPGA (DDC) for
both TX and RX

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial


USRP FPGA
DDC brings the IF band signal to baseband
All samples sent across the USB are 16-bit signed integer
values
USB can only handle 32Megabytes/s or less

Figure: FPGA Diagram


Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial
USRP FPGA - example
Each DDC can be viewed as a Low Pass Filter followed by a
downsampler (Decimator)
Result of several inputs is an interleaved complex signal
Blocks exist in software to access these FPGA parameters

Figure: FPGA Receive


Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial
Hardware summary

GNU radio is full duplex. The only limiting factor is the USB
interface.
Within software, we work with complex signals
Any considerable work will most likely be done in GNU radio
C++ blocks
We leave most of the FPGA settings alone
The best place for help is doxygen:
[Link]

Grace Woo GNU Radio Tutorial

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