 The
testbed provides a low-cost, flexible, and reconfigurable means to experimentally
evaluate many communication techniques and higher layer protocols. Each
transceiver node is made up of a radio-frequency (RF) front-end, a software-
processing (SP) baseband unit containing a data acquisition (DAQ) unit
and a notebook computer, and a hardware-processing (HP) unit consisting
of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) development board with on-board
A/D and D/A converters. The SP unit provides a maximum degree of reconfigurability
based on software implementation in the PC, while the HP unit allows for
real-time experimentation. This two-tier testbed approach provides us an
easier way to attack the design of the algorithms. For instance, we can
first test and fine-tune a prototype design of an algorithm using the off-line
software baseband processor. After the algorithmic design is completed,
we can convert the software, say C routines, to VHDL and make necessary
modifications to allow for real-time implementation based on the FPGA board.
Information about the design and implementation of the testbed is made
available from the project homepage in order to share our experience in
developing the testbed with other wireless communications researchers and
practitioners in the country.
Impact:
The testbed has had a significant impact on undergraduate
and graduate education at the University of Florida. It provides a platform
for undergraduate students to participate in integrated design training
and gain research experience. Two senior-level undergraduate students and
two graduate students are currently working on research projects that utilize
the testbed for experimentation. The students first conduct simulation
studies on algorithms that are developed in the research projects. Then
they employ the testbed to perform off-line experiments over a real communication
channel to identify possible weaknesses of the algorithms that are developed
based on theoretical models. Finally, they fine-tune the algorithms to
produce a real-time FPGA implementation. In this process, undergraduate
and graduate students will have the opportunity to participate in advanced
theoretical research as well as to go through many parts of the design
process of baseband processing for wireless communication systems.
Equipment:
Altera APEX 20K 1500E FPGA/DSP Development Boards
National Instruments DAQ Pad-6070E
Micro Devices RD0300 OOK RF Transceiver Frontends
Dell Inspiron 8200 Laptops
Tektronic TDS5104 Digital Phosphor Oscilloscope
Tektronic AWG2021 Arbitrary Waveform Generator
Agilent E3640A Power Supply
|
