A design workflow for software defined radios

Abstract

Current technology and policy have created an apparent spectrum scarcity, a situation in which it seems there is not enough available RF spectrum to deploy the next generation of wireless services. It has been shown that this appearance is incorrect because the majority of licensed spectrum is unutilized. In order to address this problem a new technology, the spectrum sensing cognitive radio, has been proposed. Such a radio would be able to locate and use licensed spectrum while avoiding interference with the licensed user, a technique dubbed dynamic spectrum access. This idea has sparked a range of new technologies and algorithms for supporting dynamic spectrum access.

Many of the cognitive systems use highly complex algorithms for enabling dynamic spectrum access. With a variety of hardware systems available to run these algorithms, it is becoming necessary to have a common interface to the software defined radio. In order to meet the growing demands for interoperability, this thesis proposes a workflow for developing new software defined radio platforms. This process is verified through development of the University of Kansas Agile Radio platform. Using the knowledge garnered from the development of this system a generic software defined radio control interface is developed. Such a system will allow the development of a hardware agnostic cognitive network stack.