- Abhay Samant, Technical Marketing Manager – India, Russia and Arabia, National Instruments
Growing demand for more reliable, higher-bandwidth, and more advanced RF and wireless technologies has motivated researchers worldwide to design the next generation of wireless systems. Recently, National Instruments announced a platform that will enable rapid prototyping of these systems – the NI USRP RIO. Building on NI USRP™ (Universal Software Radio Peripheral), a research platform already popular in academia and industry, the USRP RIO features an open LabVIEW programmable FPGA architecture.
Here we asked Abhay Samant, Technical Marketing Manager of NI more about this platform and how it will benefit engineers working in wireless space.
1. Explain more about the prototyping platform for wireless communication systems?
National Instruments has announced an integrated software defined radio solution for rapidly prototyping high-performance, multichannel wireless communication systems. The NI USRP RIO platform is built on the NI LabVIEW RIO architecture and combines a high-performance RF transceiver with an open LabVIEW programmable FPGA architecture. RIO stands for Reconfigurable Input Output, which is a capability provided by LabVIEW to help engineers and scientists design the instrument according to their needs. USRP RIO is ideal for a wide range of application areas, including 5G wireless communications research and communications intelligence. Some key features of USRP RIO include,
• Shorten time to results significantly
• Prototype wireless and algorithm systems faster
• Transmit and receive signals from DC to 6 GHz
2. How it drives next generation wireless communication technology?
USRP RIO provides engineers and scientists a scalable platform which allows them to validate research theory with real-world signals. We are returning to the era of scientists such as Sir Bose and C.V.Raman, where experimentation was a key element of any scientific discovery. While theory forms the basis of any solid innovation, it is very important that the theory is validated on experimentation systems that very closely approximate real-world devices and tested with real-world signals. USRP RIO enables researchers to achieve this, in a highly productive manner. This latest product from National Instruments is aligned with our overall mission, which is to equip engineers and scientists with tools that accelerate productivity, innovation and discovery.
3. What is special about recently launched NI USRP platform?
The recently launched NI USRP RIO platform features 2×2 MIMO transceivers tunable to independent frequencies with options from 50 MHz to 6 GHz. It fully supports a Xilinx Kintex-7 FPGA with DSP48 co-processing, reconfigurable using National Instruments LabVIEW. It supports a 40 MHz per channel real-time bandwidth with 80 dB of dynamic range. It supports a high-speed, low-latency PXI Express x4 (~800 MB/s) connection to the host, which enables up-to 800MB/s connection to the host. It also has options for an integrated GPS receiver for better frequency accuracy and synchronization.
4. How it will benefit the engineers working in wireless communication system?
The fast design cycles and increasing complexity of RF and wireless systems demand better integration between design and test. RF system designers need to validate their simulations with actual measurements, while RF test engineers need to increase test reuse and decrease test time through more design integration. By leveraging the effectiveness of the integration between NI software and hardware, RF design engineers can significantly improve productivity through increased connectivity between design, validation and production test functions. We believe that these hardware and software enhancements to our platform will continue to help communication system designers, as they develop next generation systems.
5. Can we have the applications where it particularly benefits?
Applications of USRP RIO platform include, but are not limited to, physical layer prototyping, record and playback of over the air signals, signal intelligence, cognitive radio research, hands-on wireless and digital communication labs, and hands-on experimentation with real-world communication signals. For example, Prof. Jan Dohl, Vodafone Chair at TU Dresden, uses this platform to clean up impairments introduced by low cost RF front ends. The goal of his project was to developing an improved method by applying digital signal processing techniques to correct nonlinear RF impairments, and validating the approach using real-world wireless signals. You can read more about this case study at http://sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-13962. Likewise, Paulo Marques at COGEU faced the challenge of proving that limited radio spectrum resources can be used successfully by both primary and secondary users in an economically feasible way. The solution that he came up with was to create a flexible, live testing platform by using NI LabVIEW software and USRP™ (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) hardware to develop a cross-platform cognitive radio demonstrator that combines spectrum sensing and a geo-location database to show effective spectrum reuse. You can read more about this case study at http://sine.ni.com/cs/app/doc/p/id/cs-14513
6. Tell us about NI key milestones in offering wireless platform?
For more than a decade now, National Instruments has been adding innovative products to its RF portfolio. In 2012, we announced the world’s first software designed instrument, the RF Vector Signal Transceiver. It features a RF Signal Generator, RF Signal Analyzer and a Xilinx FPGA programmable using NI LabVIEW FPGA. We expanded the frequency coverage of our products to 14GHz with the release of the NI PXIe-5665. Recently, National Instruments announced the release of the NI PXIe-5667 spectrum monitoring receiver which is optimized for radio monitoring, interference detection, spectrum regulation, and related applications in line with ITU recommendations. The receiver covers a frequency range of 30 Hz to 3.6 GHz or 7 GHz with instantaneous bandwidth options of 25 MHz and 50 MHz. National Instruments announced its acquisition of Phase Matrix, which brings key RF talent, technologies and manufacturing capabilities to NI and will significantly increase the capability of NI products in high-frequency RF and microwave applications, extending the frequency range of NI products to 26.5 GHz and beyond. On the software side, National Instruments has also announced the acquisition of AWR, which is a leading supplier of electronic design automation (EDA) software for designing RF and high-frequency components and systems for the semiconductor, aerospace and defense, communications and test equipment industries.
