Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 12, numbers 1 and 2, 2019 // View article

A Hardware/Software Framework for Multiantenna Receivers

Authors:
Janos Buttgereit
Erik Volpert
Horst Hartmann
Dirk Fischer
Götz C. Kappen
Tobias Gemmeke

Keywords: Multiantenna Systems; Wireless Sensor Networks; Spectral Efficiency; Software-defined-radio; IoT; GNSS; DECT

Abstract:
Multiantenna receivers play a significant role if security and spectral efficiency are critical issues for given applications. This could be during the setup of large wireless sensor networks in the Internet of Things (IoT) as well as for applications which suffer from interfering signals. This paper presents a framework to setup and evaluate real-time hardware/software demonstrators, based on flexible Software Defined Radio (SDR) hardware, low-cost multiantenna-arrays and a modular software architecture. The main purpose of this framework is to evaluate cost-benefit parameters (i.e., required processing power, logic resources vs. performance of the multiantenna algorithms) of the overall multiantenna receiver (i.e., antenna, analog and digital signal processing). Therefore, size and power consumption as well as miniaturization of the demonstrator are not considered at this time. To motivate software functions and high-level software architecture, this paper gives a theoretical background of multiantenna receivers and associated algorithms. A highly adaptable and modular C++-based framework has been developed that realizes all relevant low level and high level signal processing tasks (e.g., ADC-data transfer, online system calibration, Direction of Arrival (DoA) estimation and interferer suppression), as well as graphical visualization of the spatial spectrum. The multithread-based realization of the demonstrator ensures high performance and a convenient user experience. First measurements of the whole system (i.e., low-cost antenna, C++-based high level and low level signal processing, as well as graphical visualization using a host PC) in a real-world environment, proof functional correctness while demonstrating real-time capability of the overall system. This paper gives a qualitative overview of the required effort to change the center frequency or the type of modulation. Also, the paper shows the requirements to perform a change in the application domain, e.g., switching from DoA-estimation or interferer suppression.

Pages: 21 to 31

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2019. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2019

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x