Ultrawideband USRP-Based Channel Sounding Utilizing the RFNoC Framework

Abstract

This paper shows how an ultrawideband channel sounder can be built with the latest National Instruments (NI) Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) equipment, featuring onboard FPGA processing and utilizing open-source tools. Compared to other USRP-based channel sounders, our design is versatile, eases the requirements on the data link between the USRPs and the host, limits the measurement data size, and increases the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio due to averaging. Furthermore, this paper serves as a proof-of-concept for other researchers seeking to build a channel sounder based on the USRP equipment.