SOFTWARE-DEFINED RADIO SHORT COURSE

30 October3 November 2017

Instructors: Dr. Sven G. Biln, P.E. and Dr. Julio V. Urbina

Emails: sbilen@psu.edu and jvu1@psu.edu

Suggested Texts: Grayver, Eugene, Implementing Software Defined Radio, Springer, 2013.
Available online (within Penn State) here:
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4419-9332-8
Reed, J.H., Software Radio: A Modern Approach to Radio Engineering, Prentice
Hall PTR, 2002.
Johnson, C.R., W.A. Sethares, and A.G. Klein, Software Receiver DesignBuild
Your Own Digital Communication System in Five Easy Steps, Cambridge,
2011.
Rouphael, T.J. RF and Digital Signal Processing for Software-Defined Radio: A
Multi-Standard Multi-Mode Approach, Elsevier, 2007.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780750682107
Wyglinski, A.N., M. Nekovee, and Y.T. Hou, Cognitive Radio Communications
and Networks: Principles and Practice, Elsevier, 2010.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/book/9780123747150

Course Domain: With the rapid emergence of new standards and protocols in wireless
communication, many functions of traditional radio receivers are being
implemented in software. These new radio transceivers are called software-
defined radios since their implementation relies heavily on digital signal
processing techniques and require fewer radio-frequency components than classic
hardware-based analog radios. Consequently, by utilizing software radio
algorithms, it is possible to implement radio transceivers at a very low cost and
simultaneously to exploit the multiple benefits a digital system offers, such as
high dynamic range, perfect coherent quadrature detection, and programmable
filters.

Course Objectives: This short course is designed to give practitioners, faculty, upperclassmen, and
graduate students an overview of software-defined radio systems and the
technologies necessary for their successful implementation in future
communication systems. The course contains hands-on project work in order to
implement working SDR systems.

Lab Assignments: Lab assignments will be discussed in class and provided as separate assignments.
A background in VHDL or C programming is not required, but helpful. The SDR
platform we will use is the NI 2920, which requires knowledge of LabVIEW.

Course Project: Working, implemented SDR systems will be required as part of this course. In the
lab, you will be provided hardware platforms to work on as well as the
 appropriate software tools. You will work in teams for the labs and the course
project.

COURSE STRUCTURE
(Subject to change due to student interest and time constraints)

Module Topic
1 Introduction to software-defined radio
SDR system overview; classes of software radios; historical trends; overview of commercial, military,
and aerospace applications

2 Review of telecommunication concepts and systems

Transmission; bandwidth; up/downconversion; filtering; gain, sensitivity, and noise figure; signal-to-
noise ratio; RF, IF, and baseband frequencies; the radio communication problem, propagation; noise and
interference
3 Modulation/demodulation schemes
Generating waveforms; analog modulation schemes; digital modulation schemes

4 Front-end RF system
Antennas; amplifiers; mixers; filters; oscillators; direct digital synthesizers
5 Sampling
Sampling theorem; aliasing; quantization; automatic gain control; decimation; interpolation
6 Analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion
Ideal data converters; practical data converters
7 Digital filtering
Discrete time; discrete frequency; discrete Fourier transform; low, high, and bandpass filters; digital filter
banks; digital signal processors
8 Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA)
9 Signal recovery
Carrier recovery; phase-locked loop; Costas loop; frequency tracking; signal spectrum; eye diagrams
10 Timing recovery; equalization
11 Baseband processing
Coding; redundancy; entropy
12 Cognitive Radios
Cooperative Communication
13 Complete SDR systems
Existing SDR systems; Joint Tactical Radio System; Ultra-Wide Band
14 Special Topics
15 Future Trends in SDR
Project Demonstrations

We would like to know what materials are going to be needed on the workshop, hardware, software.
For the hardware we already have available:
1 USRP N210
3 USRP B210
1 HackRF One
2 RTL-SDR
For the software:
GNU Radio Companion

Also, what topics are going to be covered.

We would like to see, apart from basic concepts on SDR, some applications using SDR in the field of
mobile communication, digital television, radar, cognitive radio and IoT.