The Department of Electrical Engineering has acquired NI/Ettus USRP N210 SDRs (Software Defined Radios) through ORIC UMT for a proposal entitled “Software Defined Radios for Next generation Wireless and Network Engineering Based Education”.
The items that have been acquired are as follows:
1. Two USRP N210 Kits
2. Two SBX-40 USRP Daughterboards (400 MHz-4.4 GHz, 40 MHz Bandwidth)
3. Two Intel i7 10 Generation PCs
USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) devices are industry-leading commercial off-the-shelf software defined radios (SDRs). Thousands of engineers around the world use USRP SDRs to rapidly design, prototype, and deploy wireless systems. They are marketed and sold under two different brand names: NI and Ettus Research.
The USRP N210 provides high-bandwidth, high-dynamic range processing capability. The USRP N210 is intended for demanding communications applications requiring this type of rapid development. The product architecture includes a Xilinx® Spartan® 3A-DSP 3400 FPGA, 100 MS/s dual ADC, 400 MS/s dual DAC and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to stream data to and from host processors. The SBX daughterboard is a wide bandwidth transceiver that provides up to 100 mW of output power, and a typical noise figure of 5 dB.
The aim of acquiring the equipment is to provide necessary tools to faculty and students of the Department of Electrical Engineering for implementation of various physical layer protocols. The tangible outcomes from this include:
1. Undergraduate and graduate level research laboratory using software defined radio which can be utilized for following courses: Signal and Systems, Communication Systems, Radars, Wireless Communication, Network Security, Computer Networks, Networks and Protocols. These courses are currently being offered at the department.
2. Implementation of novel signal processing algorithms and related wireless sensing applications on USRPs for research and development activities for the faculty.
3. A greater scope of research publications based on hardware implementation of related applications.
4. Opportunity for the students of the Department of Electrical Engineering to work on high quality R&D projects.