NeTS ProWiN: An Open Systems Approach for Rapid Prototyping Waveforms for Software Defined Radio

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

The focus of this effort is the development and distribution of an open source software communications architecture (SCA), referred to as OSSIE. We provide the software defined radio (SDR) research community the tools and software necessary to explore and develop software-defined wireless systems across multiple layers of the OSI stack, resulting in more efficient SDR design in terms of power consumption and data throughput. This allows rapid prototyping and testing of new waveforms with minimal hardware dependencies. Underlying research issues being investigated include algorithm development, cross-layer optimization, and the rapid development of highly portable code. The resulting suite of tools allows us to address a number of previous SCA limitations. Specifically we are (a) developing SCA code having greatly enhanced portability, especially with regards to FPGAs in radios; (b) reducing overhead by circumventing the use of CORBA; (c) increasing the flexibility of the radio to support the dynamic adaptation necessary for implementing cognitive radios; and (d) reducing power consumption by designing software enabled power management techniques that take advantage of signal properties. In addition we are developing a new radio design methodology in which the radio under development can be emulated within the framework using test instruments and "software wrappers" to facilitate over-the-air testing. Test instruments are then replaced with SCA-compatible hardware to create the prototype radio, a technique that significantly reduces development time. Radios not having a SCA compliant hardware structure can still be developed using this methodology through the use of OSSIE's well-defined Application Program Interfaces.