5.3.1) Software Defined Radios

NI USRPs

AERPAW has various types of USRP platforms from NI deployed at the platform. Both the AERPAW fixed nodes and the portable nodes have USRP B205mini and USRP B210 deployed and available for experimentation. Features of these USRPs include the following: 

• USRP B210 supports the frequency range between 70 MHz to 6 GHz, up to 56 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth, and 30.72 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth in 2×2 MIMO (61.44 MHz sampling rate). It has 2 RX/TX for MIMO, 12-bit ADC, 12-bit DAC, and a Xilinx Spartan6 FPGA. 

• USRP B205mini, the smallest of the USRP we are deploying at AERPAW, features a Xilinx Spartan 6 XC6SLX150 FPGA and Analog Devices AD9361 RFIC direct-conversion transceiver. It supports frequencies between 70 MHz – 6 GHz with up to 56 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth (61.44 MS/s quadrature), and full-duplex operation. 

In addition, USRP N310 and USRP X310 are deployed in all the fixed nodes. However, they are not accessible by default by experimenters. If you are interested in using these USRPs for some reason, please contact the AERPAW team at aerpaw-contact@ncsu.edu.   

• USRP N310 supports the frequency range 10 MHz to 6 GHz, with an instantaneous bandwidth up to 100 MHz per channel, as well as 4 RX and 4TX channels, 16-bit ADC, 14-bit DAC, and a Xilinx Zynq-7100 SoC. 

• USRP X310 supports the frequency range 10 MHz to 6 GHz, up to 160 MHz bandwidth, 2 RX and 2TX channels, 14 bit ADC, 16 bit DAC, and a Xilinx Zynq-7100 SoC. 

Various example experiments using USRPs are available under the Experiment Repository section and available to experimenters to program in AERPAW's digital twin.