Papyrus

Abstract

Proliferation and innovation of wireless technologies require significant amounts of radio spectrum. Recent policy reforms by the FCC are paving the way by freeing up spectrum for a new generation of frequency-agile wireless devices based on software defined radios (SDRs). But despite recent advances in SDR hardware, research on SDR MAC protocols or applications requires an experimental platform for managing physical access. We introduce Papyrus, a software platform for wireless researchers to develop and experiment dynamic spectrum systems using currently available SDR hardware. Papyrus provides two fundamental building blocks at the physical layer: flexible non-contiguous frequency access and simple and robust frequency detection. Papyrus allows researchers to deploy and experiment new MAC protocols and applications on USRP GNU Radio, and can also be ported to other SDR platforms. We demonstrate the use of Papyrus using Jello, a distributed MAC overlay for high-bandwidth media streaming applications and Ganache, a SDR layer for adaptable guardband configuration. Full implementations of Papyrus and Jello are publicly available.