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This thesis examines the high peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) problem of OFDM and other spectrally-efficient multicarrier modulation schemes, specifically their stringent requirements for highly linear, power-inefficient amplification. The thesis then presents a most intriguing answer to the PAPR-problem in the form of a constant-envelope OFDM (CE-OFDM) waveform, a waveform which employs phase modulation to transform the high-PAPR OFDM signal into a constant envelope signal, like FSK or GMSK, which can be amplified with non-linear power amplifiers at near saturation levels of efficiency. A brief analytical description of CE-OFDM and its suboptimal receiver architecture is provided in order to define and analyze the key parameters of the waveform and their performance impacts. The primary contribution of this thesis is a highly tunable software-defined radio (SDR) implementation of the waveform which enables rapid-prototyping and testing of CE-OFDM systems. The digital baseband processing of the waveform is executed on a general purpose processor (GPP) in the Linux Ubuntu 14.04 operating system, and programmed using the GNU Radio SDR software framework with a mixture of Python and C++ routines. A detailed description of the software implementation is provided, and baseband simulations of the SDR CE-OFDM receiver in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) validate the performance of the implemented signal processing. A fully-functional CE-OFDM radio system is proposed in which GPPs executing the software defined transmitter and receiver routines are interfaced with Ettus Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) transceiver front ends. A software testbench is created to enable rapid configuration and testing of the CE-OFDM waveform over all permutations of its parameters, over both simulated and physical RF channels, to draw deeper insights into the characteristics of the waveform and the necessary design considerations and improvements for further development and deployment of CE-OFDM systems. / Master of Science

The ionosphere is a constantly changing medium. From the sun to cosmic rays, the ionosphere proves to be a continually interesting area of study. The most notable change that occurs in the ionosphere is the day and night cycle. The ionosphere is not a singular medium, but rather made up of different sections. The day side of the ionosphere consists of a D, E, F1, and F2 layer. The night day of the ionosphere consists of an E and F layer. These layers all have different properties and characteristics associated with them. A notable interaction is how radio waves propagate through the ionosphere. A radio wave can either reflect, refract, or pass through a layer of the ionosphere depending on the frequency of the signal, among other sources of disturbance. The ability to have a radio wave reflected back downwards is a core principle of an ionosonde, which measures the height of the ionosphere. A solar eclipse presents a night side ionosphere condition during the day. The change in the ionosphere that the eclipse will cause is something not a lot of research has gone into. This thesis aims to elaborate on the design and development of an ionosonde along with eventual ionosphere readings during the August 2017 total solar eclipse. / Master of Science / The atmosphere that surrounds the earth is made up of various unique regions. The region of interest for this thesis is the ionosphere. The ionosphere plays an important role in wireless communication of radio waves. It follows that changes in the ionosphere are something of great interest and study. A notable change that the ionosphere undergoes on a daily basis is the shift from the day side to the night side. A solar eclipse serves not only as a spectacular sight, but also to bring a night side condition to the day side. This thesis aims to uncover the changes that will occur to the ionosphere during the August 2017 total solar eclipse.

Traditional hardware radios provide very rigid solutions to radio problems. Intelligent software defined radios, also known as cognitive radios, provide flexibility and agility compared to hardware radio systems. Cognitive radios are well suited for radio applications in a changing radio frequency environment, such as dynamic spectrum access. In this thesis, a cognitive radio is demonstrated where the system self reconfigures to demodulate a detected waveform. The GNU Radio framework is used to provide basic software defined radio building blocks and is supplemented with FPGA accelerators. The use of GNU Radio compliant hardware interfaces allows for seamless hardware/software radio deployments. Dynamic resource mapping allows radio designers to operate at a layer of abstraction above the physical radio implementation. By establishing lower level abstraction layers, future researchers can focus on larger picture concepts such as learning algorithms and behavioral models for the cognitive engine. / Master of Science

Radio technology is rapidly evolving and as processing capabilities and algorithms become more complex, the need for alternative compilation and user interface abstraction increases. Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology introduces unique reconfigurable hardware architectures that can aid in software defined radio (SDR) design. FPGAs have greater processing capability than traditional general purpose processors (GPP) found in desktop workstations. This work builds on an ongoing project, GReasy, that augments a Linux based open source SDR development platform, GNU Radio, with FPGA processing capabilities. By delegating processing intensive portions of a radio design to the Xilinx Zynq FPGA architecture, the domain of deployable radios by GNU Radio can be broadened. Xilinx Zynq, integrates the FPGA fabric and CPU onto a single chip, which eliminates the need for a controlling host computer; thus, providing a single, portable, low-power, embedded platform. This thesis presents a Zynq capable version of GNU Radio -- an open-source rapid radio deployment tool -- with an enhanced flow that utilizes the processing capability of FPGAs. This work features TFlow -- an FPGA back-end compilation accelerator for instant FPGA assembly. GReasy generates a description of the hardware components that are used by TFlow for the instant FPGA assembly. Once the FPGA is programmed with a design based on the description generated by GReasy, modules and the target hardware can be parameterized to realize an even larger class of applications and further solidify the concept of rapid assembly of software defined radios. / Master of Science

Cognitive radio technology has been an important area of research in telecommunications for solving the problem of spectrum scarcity. That\'s because in addition to allowing dynamic allocation of the electromagnetic spectrum, cognitive radios must be able to identify the non cognitive user\'s transmission on the channel. This operation is only possible through the continuous sensing of the electromagnetic spectrum. In this context, this paper presents a detailed study on spectrum sensing, an important stage in cognitive radio technology. For the presentation of this work, a detailed study on software dened radio (SDR) was carried out, without which it would be impossible to work with cognitive radios, once they are implemented by means of SDR technology. It was also presented the tools GNU Radio and USRP, which together form a solution of SDR, through implementation of AM receivers. The theoretical foundations of spectrum sensing and blind source separation (BSS) are presented and then is made a detailed study of the use of BSS for spectral sensing. From the study of BSS, it is possible to use new metrics for decision making about the presence or the absence of a primary user in the channel. Throughout the study, simulations and implementations were conducted on MATLAB in order to perform various situations, and, nally, it is presented outcomes and conclusions reached during the work. / A tecnologia de rádio cognitivo tem sido uma importante área de pesquisa em telecomunicações para a solução do problema da escassez espectral. Isto porque, além de permitirem a alocação dinâmica do espectro eletromagnético, os rádios cognitivos devem ser capazes de identificar as transmissões de usuários não cognitivos no canal. Esta operação só é possível por meio do sensoriamento contínuo do espectro eletromagnético. Neste contexto, este trabalho apresenta um estudo detalhado sobre o sensoriamento de espectro, uma importante etapa da tecnologia de rádios cognitivos. Para a apresentação deste trabalho foi realizado um estudo detalhado a respeito de rádio definido por software (SDR), sem o qual não seria possível o trabalho com rádios cognitivos, uma vez que este é implementado por meio da tecnologia de SDR. Também foram apresentadas as ferramentas GNU Radio e USRP, que, juntas, formam uma solução de SDR, por meio de implementações de receptores AM. Os fundamentos teóricos de sensoriamento de espectro e separação cega de fontes (BSS) são apresentados e, em seguida, é realizado um estudo aprofundado do uso de BSS para o sensoriamento espectral. A partir do estudo de BSS, é possível utilizar novas métricas de decisão a respeito da presença ou não de um usuário primário no canal. Durante todo este trabalho foram realizadas implementações e simulações no MATLAB com a finalidade de executar diversas situações e, finalmente, são apresentados resultados verificados e conclusões obtidas neste trabalho. / Mestre em Ciências

Massive deployment of diverse ultra-low power wireless devices necessitates the rapid development of communication protocols. Software Defined Radio (SDR) provides a flexible platform for deploying and evaluating real-world performance of these protocols. But SDR platform based communication systems suffer from high and unpredictable delays. There is a lack of comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of the delays experienced by these systems for new SDR platforms like LimeSDR. This knowledge gap needs to be filled in order to reduce these delays and better design protocols which can take advantage of these platforms. We design a GNU Radio based IEEE 802.15.4 experimental setup, where the data path is time-stamped at various points of interest to get a comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of the delays. Our analysis shows GNU Radio processing and LimeSDR buffering delay are the major delays in these data paths. We try to decrease the LimeSDR buffering delay by decreasing the USB transfer size but it comes at the cost of increased processing overhead. The USB transfer packet size is modified to investigate which USB transfer size provides the best balance between buffering delay and the processing overhead across two different host computers. Our experiments show that for the best-measured configuration the mean and jitter of latency decreases by 37% and 40% respectively for the host computer with higher processing resources. We also show that the throughput is not affected by these modifications. Higher processing resources help in handling higher processing overhead and can better reduce the buffering delay. / Stora installationer av heterogena extremt energisnåla trådlösa enheter ställer krav på snabb utveckling av kommunikationsprotokoll. Mjukvarubaserad radio (Software Defined Radio, SDR) tillhandahåller en flexibel plattform för att installera och utvärdera faktisk prestanda för dessa protokoll. Men SDR-baserade system har problem med stora och oförutsägbara fördröjningar. Verklig förståelse av hur dessa fördröjningar beter sig i nya plattform som LimeSDR saknas. Dessa kunskapsbrister behöver överbryggas för att kunna minska fördröjningarna och för att mer framgångsrikt kunna designa protokoll som drar nytta av de nya plattformarna. Vi skapar en försöksuppställning för IEEE 802.15.4 baserad på GNU Radio. Data som passerar systemet tidsstämplas för att ge underlag till att förstå fördröjningarnas egenskaper. Vår analys visar att fördröjningarna främst kommer från processande i GNU-radion och buffertider för LimeSDR. Vi försöker minska buffertiderna för LimeSDR genom att minska paketstorleken för USB-överföring, men det kommer till priset av ökade bearbetningskostnader. Paketstorleken för USB-överföring modifieras för att på två olika testdatorer undersöka den bästa balansen mellan buffertider och bearbetningskostnader. Våra experiment visar att för att den mest noggrant undersökta försöksuppställningen så minskar medelvärdet och jittret för fördröjningarna med 37% och 40% för testdatorn med mest beräkningskraft. Vi visar också att genomströmningen inte påverkas av dessa ändringar. Med mer beräkningskraft kan de ökade bearbetningskostnader hanteras, och buffertiderna kan förkortas mer effektivt.

With the development of powerful computational resources such as Digital Signal Processors and Field Programmable Gate Arrays, It has become possible to utilize many radio functions via software. This is the main concept of an up-and-coming technology of Software Defined Radio. In the Thesis, a number of platforms for implementation of Software Defined Radio has been evaluated. Platform that proved to be most suitable for the project was Ettus’ USRP N210. Using the platform, implementation of 802.15.4 Zigbee’s physical layer was done, where experiments whose outputs can later be used to compare performance with respect to "hardware radios" were performed. / Med utvecklingen av enheter med kraftfulla beräkningsegenskaper som “Digital Signal Processors” och “Field Programmable Gate Arrays” har det blivit möjligt att implementera flera radiofunktioner i mjukvara. Det är huvudkonceptet i den uppåtgående teknologin mjukvaru definierad radio.I det här examensarbetet har ett flertal plattformar för mjukvaru definierad radioutvärderats. Plattformen som visade sig vara mest lämplig för projektet var Ettus USRP N210. En implementation av IEEE 802.15.4 Zigbees fysiska lager har realiserats till plattformen. Experiment, vars utdata senare kan användas för att jämföra prestanda mellan mjukvaru definierad radio och hårdvaru baserad radio, har även utförts. / TESLA - Time-critical and Safe wireLess Automation communication / GAUSS - Guaranteed Automation communication Under Severe disturbanceS