Dr. Ubaid Ullah Fiaz

The field of wireless communication has become the hottest area and Software Defined Radio (SDR) is revolutionizing it. By bringing much functionality as software, SDR reduces the cost of hardware maintenance and up-gradation. Open source hardware such as USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) and software called GNU Radio-Companion are commonly used to do experiments in SDR. Since the cost of USRP is high, a low cost set up is needed which is affordable by the student community. The aim of our project is to provide an alternative platform using RTL-SDR (Realtek Software Defined Radio) which is only used for reception. Reception of a signal can be followed by different operations with the help of an embedded system. It will allow the re-configuration of the operating parameters; center frequency, bandwidth, power level, output rate and sampling rate by software which is one of the most important features in the SDR. We provide a GUI in order to receive, process and dump the signal. The basic framework of our platform constitute of a dongle, Raspberry pi and a transmission module. We provide a GUI that sets center frequency and sampling rate according to requirements. The dongle will receive the signal, digitalize it and then send it to the USB port of Raspberry pi. Our GUI provides multiple options for the processed signal. We can either listen to it in real time or can dump the data into a file. We can dump the raw data as well. This rapid prototyping SDR will serve as a platform to understand the basic realization of signals in real time. It is a low cost alternative, 10 times cheaper than the existing one. It is a complete programmable receiver platform. It allows a user to exploit the signals in different ways using GUI functionalities. The students will perform their lab sessions in a better way. This will help the students to build their lab projects related to communication systems by writing a simple C code. It is an affordable teaching and research solution.

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