HARDWARE & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENT

SELECTION PROCESS FOR SDR LAB SET UP

Hardware Requirement
Personal Computer
USRP motherboard
USRP daughter

USRP N210
SBX 400MHz-4400MHz Transceiver

Antenna

LPO965 850MHz-6.5GHZ Antenna

Software Requirement [1]

USRP Hardware Driver
The USRP Hardware Driver is the official driver for all Ettus Research products. The USRP
Hardware Driver supports Linux, Mac OSX, Windows, NetBSD and FreeBSD .

Development Software
The application software is required to program the USRP transceivers.
The software environment which support USRP may be any one of the following:

GNU Radio
LabVIEW

Simulink

OpenBTS

OSSIE

GNU Radio
GNU Radio is an open source, software development toolkit platform for
building and deploying software radios. It has a large worldwide community
of developers and users that have contributed to a substantial code base and
provided many practical applications for the hardware and software.

It provides a complete development environment to create software radios,

handling all of the hardware interfacing, multi threading and portability
issues. GNU Radio has libraries for all common software radio needs In GNU
Radio, various pre-assembled signal processing blocks for waveform creation
and analysis are implemented.
Providing the application programming interface (API) for USRP, GNU Radio
represents the centre of SDR development with USRP frontend.
It is widely used in hobbyist, academic and commercial environments to
support wireless communications research as well as to implement real-world
radio systems.
GNU Radio runs under several operating systems like

Linux
Fedora , Ubuntu , Debian , Mandriva , SuSE , Gentoo

Mac OS X

NetBSD (likely also appropriate for DragonflyBSD and helpful for Open
BSD and FreeBSD)

Windows

GRC ( GNU Radio Companion) is an application distributed with GNU Radio,

in which software radios can be built within a flow graph using numerous
predefined blocks organized in different groups like signal sources, signal
sinks as well as modulation and demodulation functions.
Python and C++ are used as main programming languages in GNU Radio as
well as in GRC.

LabVIEW
To program the USRP transceivers with LabVIEW, users should use the NI-USRP API. The NIUSRP driver software installation provides support for the Ettus Research USRP2 or USRP
N210 devices using WBX and XCVR2450 daughterboards. The NI-USRP driver package
includes:

Support for LabVIEW 2011 (32-bit)/2010 (32-bit)/2009 (32-bit)

Support for Windows 7/Vista/XP

Interactive configuration utility to change device IP addresses and update firmware and
FPGA images

Complete hardware and API documentation.

Full set of examples, including examples that use the NI LabVIEW Modulation Toolkit

Integration with NI LabVIEW Modulation Toolkit

Access the NI-USRP API here: http://joule.ni.com/nidu/cds/view/p/id/2679/lang/en

Simulink
MathWorks offers support for the USRP N210 and USRP2, using the Communications System
Toolbox 5.0, which supports the USRP Hardware Driver to provide a real-time connection
to the USRP family of radios directly from MATLAB and Simulink. RF signals can be
received from a USRP radio, and the data processed in real-time using MATLAB functions or
Simulink blocks. Similarly, RF signals can be transmitted from MATLAB or Simulink by
streaming data to USRP radios. Parameters such as center frequency, gain and interpolation or
decimation rates can be configured directly from MATLAB or Simulink.

Support for Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms can be downloaded from:
http://www.mathworks.com/discovery/sdr/usrp.html
Simulink drivers for the USRP1 can be found at http://www.cel.kit.edu/downloads.php

Other Software Environments

OpenBTS is an open source (GPL) implementation of a GSM Basestation built around
the USRP system. You can find OpenBTS at http://openbts.sourceforge.net.
USRP Hardware Driver device support for OpenBTS can be found at
https://github.com/ttsou/openbts-uhd.

OSSIE is an open source (GPL) implementation of the JTRS Software Communications

Architecture (SCA) which works with the USRP1 and USRP2. You can find OSSIE at
http://ossie.wireless.vt.edu/