2.4 GHz Real-Time Prototyping Tool for OFDM Channel Estimation using USRP2 and LabVIEW

Abstract

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) are currently playing an important role in serving the indoor traffic demand. Therefore, there is a need for software-defined radio platforms (SDRs) that can enable the solutions used in these systems to be tested in real environments as well as simulated results. In this paper, we present the SDR-based wireless receiver platform for determining the real-time WLANs performance and provide the comparison of the different channel estimation methods for IEEE 802.11g based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) operations. The implementation of the receiver comprises the universal software radio peripheral and National Instruments LabVIEW. To determine the real-time receiver tool performance, we emphasized necessary signal processing techniques and different channel estimation methods with varying experimental parameters in real wireless environments. Experimental results report that the SDR-based receiver tool with the LabVIEW in real-time provides the throughput of the OFDM wireless network. The captured throughput performance concerning frame error rate by the receiver is also scrutinized with different channel estimation methods.