ACCELERATING NEW TECHNOLOGIES RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT WITH SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIOS

Program Overview

This Software Defined Radio (SDR) course trains technical experts in practical and theoretical aspects of communication and sensing systems. The course concludes with a focus on 5G private network creation using Open-RAN architecture.

Program Outline

Degree Overview:

The course aims to train technical figures on the practical and theoretical aspects inherent to communication and sensing systems based on the use of Software Defined Radio (SDR). The main components of a radio frequency communication system will be presented and compared with the SDR-based architecture. The students will tackle the implementation of communication systems using MATLAB or GNURadio, going into detail of the processing chains necessary to establish a physical link. Subsequently, sensing techniques based on SDRs that can be used to identify anomalies, locate terminals, or, more generally, reconstruct the propagation environment will be introduced. Once the physical layer has been addressed, the teaching will move on to the higher layers, addressing issues of access and creation/management of 5G private networks based on Open-RAN architecture. At the end of the course the students will be able to completely exploit SDR platforms and integrate them in applications inherent to the telecommunications world and/or sensing of physical quantities using radiofrequency signals.

Outline:

The course is divided into 3 modules:

• Module 1: Fundamentals of communication and SDR (12 hours)
• This module is designed for those who do not have telecommunications training or need a basic introduction to SDR.
• We will see software solutions, both open source (GNU Radio) and non-open source (MATLAB), to program SDRs and implement a communication system.
• Project: implementation of a communication system on an SDR based on simple modulation scheme (QAM, QPSK, FSK).
• Module 2: SDR and physical layer applications (9 hours)
• In this module, physical layer applications relating to the detection of physical quantities and environmental sensing will be covered.
• Firstly, spectrum sensing techniques and various applications will be introduced to transform an SDR into a spectrum analyzer.
• We will then move on to the localization of transmitters using both trilateration techniques, based on the received power, and triangulation techniques based on the measurement of the angle of arrival.
• The students will see the principles of localization using RADAR and more advanced applications such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).
• Finally, we will see the interaction between sensing and communication.
• Project: development of a sensing system of your choice to be agreed with the teacher.
• Module 3 (9 hours)
• This module will address the use of SDR for the creation of stand-alone 5G private networks via Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture.
• Laboratory: 5G-Private networks created via SDR will be demonstrated, the open-source software necessary for their creation will be introduced.
• The course director is Davide Scazzoli and the co-director is Maurizio Magarini.
• The contact person for the course is Elena Leonardi.
• The course requires basic math knowledge to understand formulas and the concept of Fourier transform for the frequency domain representation of signals.
• It is suggested to have a laptop with Linux OS or a virtual machine.