Universal Software Radio Peripheral - USRP
From Tools4SDR
Contents |
General description
USRP (universal software radio peripheral) The USRP is a flexible software defined radio developed by Ettus. It is composed of a motherboard that performs some baseband processing (sampling over 12 bits and down conversion of the received signals) and of daughter boards that do the RF part of the radio. The motherboard is connected to a host PC through a USB 2.0 link and transmit/receive in real time the base band samples. The signal design, its modulation and demodulation are hence done on the host PC. The following scheme resumes this system:
Main characteristics
| Radio interface to computer | The USRP is connected to a computer with a USB 2.0 interface |
| Frequencies | The USRP is able to work in many bands of frequencies depending on your daughterboards. For example:
|
| MIMO | Can be supported in RX depending on your motherboard. Note that the available bandwidth has to be divided by the number of antennas. |
| ADC/DAC | ADC/DAC 12 bits |
| Baseband | The baseband processing consists in sampling the signal and performing the downconvertion. |
| Software | GNU Radio |
Processing digital communications signal with USRP
Because it is able to work in a large set of bands of frequencies, some signal processing can be performed on signal transmitted by base station. An example of processing of undersampled DVB-T signal is shown on Tools4SDR. Nevertheless, because of it bandwidth limitation, it is not possible to decode WiFi, UMTS, or DVB signals.
Note that it is still possible to generate signals to handle the whole transmission. An example about the transfer of an image is shown on tools4SDR.
External links
- Ettus: Ettus website
