Development of MIMO-SDR Platform and Its Application to Real-Time Channel Measurements

Kei MIZUTANI
Kei SAKAGUCHI
Jun-ichi TAKADA
Kiyomichi ARAKI

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E89-B    No.12    pp.3197-3207
Publication Date: 2006/12/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1093/ietcom/e89-b.12.3197
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Software Defined Radio Technology and Its Applications)
Category: 
Keyword: 
multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO),  software defined radio (SDR),  hybrid implementation architecture,  real-time channel measurement,  

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Summary: 
A multiple-input multiple-output software defined radio (MIMO-SDR) platform was developed for implementation of MIMO transmission and propagation measurement systems. This platform consists of multiple functional boards for baseband (BB) digital signal processing and frequency conversion of 5 GHz-band radio frequency (RF) signals. The BB boards have capability of arbitrary system implementation by rewriting software on reconfigurable devices such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and digital signal processors (DSPs). The MIMO-SDR platform employs hybrid implementation architecture by taking advantages of FPGA, DSP, and CPU, where functional blocks with the needs for real-time processing are implemented on the FPGAs/DSPs, and other blocks are processed off-line on the CPU. In order to realize the hybrid implementation, driver software was developed as an application program interface (API) of the MIMO-SDR platform. In this paper, hardware architecture of the developed MIMO-SDR platform and its software implementation architecture are explained. As an application example, implementation of a real-time MIMO channel measurement system and initial measurement results are presented.