cognitive Radio _ 2-5 SDR Architecture [23] Basic sor «A basic SDR system may consist of a personal computer equipped with a sound card or other analog-to-digital converter, preceded by some form of RF front end. Significant amounts of signal processing are handed over. to the general-purpose eprocessor, rather. than being “done in special-purpose hardware (electronic circuits). Such a design produces a radio which can receive and transmit widely different radio protocols (sometimes referred to as waveforms) based solely on the software used. «Software radios have significant utility for the military and cell phone services, both of which must “ serve a wide variety of changing radio protocols in real time. We are all aware that the SDR is the combination of hardware and software, significantly it is necessary to define an atchitecture so as to build an entire system. This section deals with the software and hardware architecture of an SDR. ome) ies ICINIA (Rx, Ts) SPEAKeasy-1 SPEAKeasyi1 se! Demag 2008 wats! SOR forum «Today's SDR, in contrast, is a general-purpose device in which the same radio tuner and processors ‘are used to implement many waveforms at many frequencies. The advantage of this approach is that the equipment is more versatile and costéffective. Additionally, it can be upgraded with new software for new waveforms and new applications after sale, delivery, and installation, « Architecture - it is defined as the process of designing or defining the structure for the building blocks of a technology for optimal utilization of the critical resources and other benefits. a 2.3.1] Hardware Architecture of SDR «The basic SDR must include the radio front-end, the modem, the cryptographic security function, and the application function. In’ addition, some radios will also include support for network devices connected to either the plain text side or the modem side of the radio, allowing the radio to provide network services and to be remotely controlled over the local Ethernet. ° «The hardware architecture of SDR defines the basic building blocks of Hardware section of SDR. The basic hardware architecture provides sufficient resources to define carrier frequency, bandwidth, modulation, any necessary cryptography and source coding in software. The hardware resources may a TTECHCAL PUBLICATIONS” in up tt forknwseeboCognitive Ratio include mixtures of GPs, DSPs, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and other computational Tesourees, sufficient to include a wide range of modulation types. * The basic SDR must include the radio front-end, the modem, the cryptographic security function and the application function, Most of the advanced SDR Units may also include modules to remotely contiol over the: local Ethemet, antenna management functions, coax switches, power amplifiers etc., + The basic hardware architecture of SDR is divided into two sections namely : (i) RF Front End and (ii) Digital Back End. The following Fig. 23.2 shows the hardware architecture of a basic SDR. 1 7 ; Frontend if Dighal back-end { ' ' t i i Tunable er and uN | winae [AGO Lew NK ses | Gre] —-[ Sa ' 1 rons ' ' ' Dubloxer and antenna manager! tuner | aa) manager “Tunable Wats aaa ower amplifier Carrer synthesizer r t 1 Fig. 2.3.2 Basic hardware architecture of a modern SDR @ RF Front End (RFFE) : This section deals with antennas for transmit and receive functions, RF to IF conversion process, amplitiers ete. The main function of the receive mode is to capture the desired signal by properly supressing the out of band signals (undesired signals) to a practically possible extent. Similarly the main function of the transmit mode is to synthesize the RF signal without introducing noise and spurious emissions at any other frequencies that might interfere with other users in the spectrum, ‘The various modules that supports the transmit and receive functions of RFFE are as follows - + Antenna matching unit + Low noise amplifier / Power Amplifiers + Filter + Local oscillators + Analog to Digital and Digital to Analog Converters RFFE - Receive Mode Proces: “The modem processes the. received signal or synthesizes the transmitted signal, or both for a full Guplex radio. Firstly, the carrier frequency of the received signal is shifted to the frequency nearly equivalent to heterodyne shifting frequency as perceived by the digital processors to enable the digital filtering, : +The digital filters in the next stage provides high level of suppression of interfering signals, The modem then timealigns and de-spreads the signal as required, and refilters the signal to the information bandwidth, Next the modem time-aligns the signal to the symbol or baud time so that it cen optimally align the demodulated signal with expected models of the demodulated signal TECHNICAL PUBLICATIONS" Anup trator txowedpeAce Frequency ofsei] [ interterence NDoCercat | | Dospread |. | suppressor |_| to ‘Channel Coarse fit Fine baud timing} | equalizer an b -e / Networking coir message anaisis \—+} ‘be-imutioiexer | —o} ‘Bis to application layer Fig. 2.3.3 Digital signal receiver block diagram +The modem may include an equalizer to correct for channel multipath artifacts, and for filtering and delay distortions. It may also optionally include rake filtering to optimally cohere multipath components for demodulation. The modem will compare the received symbols with the possible received symbols and make a best possible estimate of which symbols were transmitted if there is a weak signal or strong interference, some symbols may be received in error. If the waveform includes FEC coding, the modem will decode the received. sequence of encoded symbols by usitig the structured redundancy introduced in the coding process to detect and correct the encoded symbols that were received in error. RFFE - Transmit Mode Process : + The important property of these circuits is to synthesize the RF signal without introducing noise and spurious emissions at any other frequencies that might interfere with other users in the spectrum. ‘Signal processing at the transmit side is the inverse of that the receiver side. The bits of information to be transmitted are grouped as packets and adds the structured redundancy to provide the error correction at the receiver. These group of bits are now converted into symbols, selects a wave shape to represent each symbol. These wave forms are synthesized and filtered so as to keep the signal within the bandwidth. The final waveform is filtered to match the desired transmit signal bandwidth. It may spread the signal to a much wider bandwidth by multiplying the symbol by a wideband waveform which is also generated by similar methods. The final waveform is filtered to match the desired transmit signal bandwidth. Bits from application >| layer Multiplexer : + ito symbol ‘and optional Je} Outer FEC |e{ tnnerFEC. fo In | ‘ryploaraphy ene Gusune | Sai eal Predistonion |_| formed Mocuator [4] Specie Sptonal |*}PAcompensaten|™| “acrane [Tenant ae es shaping i wero Fig. 2.3.4 Digital signal transmitter block diagram TECHNGAL PUBLICATIONS"Cognitive Radio +The power amplifier and local oscillator jointly works to produce the desired carrier frequency. The antenna matching circuits are used to minimize the Voltage Standing Wave Radio (VSWR). The cryptographic security function must encrypt any information to be transmitted.’ This processes cannot be generalised because the encryption process is unique for each applications. +The several standards for the encryption are Digital Encryption Standard (DES), Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (i) Digital Back End : This section deals with the computational processing resources such as GPP's, DSP's, FPGA's and other special function Processors. The application processor will typically implement a vocoder, a video coder, and/or a data coder, as well, as selected web browser functions. The Compression factors are typically in the range of 10:1 are achieved in voice coding, and up to 100:1 in video coding. This section also takes care of the User interface and power management. Processors are selected based on the nature of application. Typically, speech and video processing runs on DSP processors. Text and web 2 based operations runs on GPP. As the technology advances the speech and video processing applications requires for a Key board and displays. The architecture should have the capability to incorporate additional modules as per the demand, The various computational processing resources are briefly discussed in later sections. 2.3.2 | Software Architecture of SDR q ‘ln the basic software architecture of a moder. SDR, the application programming interfaces (APIs) are defined for the major interfaces to assure software portability across many very different hardware platform implementations, as well as to assure that the basic software infrastructure supports a wide diversity of waveform applications ‘without havinig to be rewritten for each waveform or application. The software has the ability to allocate computational resources to specific waveforms, It is norinal for an SDR to support many waveforms in order to interface to any networks and thus to have a library of waveforms and protocols. The SDR radio is decomposed into a stack of hardware ‘and software functions, with ‘open standard interfaces. APIs = standardized “Software communication Intoriaons ‘rcitcture cor framework Multiprocessor: intercommunication infrastructure (CORBA OR equivalent) ieee enpoora weoonuon EE ES] i \ emer oar . | TECHCAL PUBLICATIONS™ Anup roto knwo# The objective of the software architecture in an SDR is to place waveforms and applications onto a software-based radio platform in a standardized ‘way. These waveforms and applications are installed, used, and replaced by other applications as required to achieve the user's objectives. To make the waveform and application interfaces standardized, it is necessary to make the hardware platform present a set of highly standardized interfaces. The waveform development proceeds by assuming a standardized set of interfaces (APIs) for the radio hardware, and the radio hardware translates commands and _ status messages crossing those interfaces tothe unique underlying hardware through a set of common drivers. In addition, the method by which a waveform is installed into a radio, activated, deactivated, and de-installed, and the way in which radios use the standard interfaces must be standardized so. that waveforms are reasonably portable to more than one hardware platform implementation. * The Software' Architecture stack starts with the hhardware and the one or more data buses that move information among the various processors. On top of the hardware, several standardized layers of software are installed. This includes the boot loader, the Operating System (OS); the Board Support Package (BSP, which consists of input/output drivers that know how to control each interface); and a layer called the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL). The HAL provides a method for GPPs to communicate with DSPs and FPGA processors. ‘The US Government has defined “a standardized software architecttire, Known as the Software ‘Communication Architecture (SCA), The SCA is a core framework to provide a standardized process for identifying the available computational resources of the radio, matching those resources to the required resources for an application. The SCA is built upon a standard set of OS features called The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), which also has standardized APIs to perform OS functions such as file management and computational thread/task scheduling. TEGHNIGAL PUBLICATIONS". An uo Uru for iowa SDR Architecture ‘= The SCA also specifies a Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) middleware, which is ‘used to provide a standardized method for software objects to communicate with each other, regardless ‘of which processor they have been installed. +The SCA also provides a standardized method of defining the requirements for each application, perforined in eXtensible Markup Language (XML), The XML is parsed and helps to determine how to distribute and install the software objects Jn summary, these. applications will have many reasons to interact with the Internet as- well as many local networks; therefore, it is also common to provide a collection of standardized radio services, network services and security services, s0 that each application does not need to have its own copy of Internet Protocol and other commonly used functions. Challenges : «The hardware and software architectures should allow RF external features to be added if or when required for a particular installation or customer requirement, Reason for Separate Architectures : *The independence in the hardware and software architecture enables porting the software to an arbitrary hardware platform. Also this indépendent nature allows the hardware to separately evolve its architecture from software and thus frees the hardware to continue to evolve and improve after delivery of the initial product. [24] computational Processing Resources USOT AORTALIT +The design of an SDR must anticipate the’ computational resources needed to implement its most complex application. The computational resources may consist of GPPs, DSPs, FPGAs, and occasionally will include other chips that extend the computational capacity. Generally, the SDR design engineer will avoid inclusion of application specific non-programmable chips as they reduce the flexibility to support various waveforms and applications.