Audio-Band Software-Defined-Radio Approach to Communication System Design Course

Abstract

An innovative audio-band software-defined-radio (AB-SDR) approach is proposed for a design-oriented lab course on communication systems. By using a full-duplex sound card and Matlab software, the versatile AB-SDR platform facilitates the canonical top-down design flow at minimum cost. Illustrated by an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transceiver design example, it is shown that almost every kind of communication system can be practically designed, simulated, realised, and tested in a systematic and flexible way. Since bandpass signals in audio band are generated in the real world, important design issues like receiver synchronisation and channel effects can be physically observed and tackled. Hence, the AB-SDR lab course can help students to put abstract communication principles into practice, and gain an overview of communication systems design.