Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a growing technology that allows radio communication to become interoperable. SDR can lower the cost for a particular hardware radio to communicate with another radio that uses a different standard. In order to show the capability of SDR, this thesis shows how to implement IEEE 802.14.5, a low-rate wireless personal area network (LR-WPAN) standard, on a standalone embedded machine. The implementation is done using a universal software radio peripheral embedded, USRP E100, an open source software development toolkit for SDR, GNU Radio, and UCLA ZigBee PHY GNU Radio application. The implementation can be done on the regular non-embedded USRPs. However, without a fast host computer demodulating the packets, the USRP E100 cannot receive incoming packets. An available FPGA is used to solve this problem by doing a software-hardware hybrid design to allow the USRP E100 to communicate with other IEEE 802.15.4 devices. The final product is an IEEE 802.15.4 monitor software that detects messages from devices communicating using IEEE 802.15.4 in its range. In addition, recommendations are presented for improving SDR education and training, particularly for developers with backgrounds in disciplines other than communications engineering. / Master of Science