Introduction to Software Defined Radio (SDR) - Hands On
In this lead-off class, we will look at a brief history of software defined radio (SDR) and the basic building blocks and typical applications that have made this the fastest growing advance in radio receiving technology since the phase-locked loop.
To better prepare for the remainder of the week's classes, we will take a Day to learn (or review) the basics of RF and radio receiver design. We will look at front-end amplifiers, mixers, and demodulation methods in the traditional superheterodyne receiver and how it contrasts to SDR methods.
In our third class, we will begin our ‘hands-on' lab using the Adafruit Industries LLC 1497 RTL2832 with R820T Stick Kit. We will look at the origins of the RTL2832 and R820T chips and how the common radio dongle works and some of the forms that it is available in. We will then look at some of the repositories for common open-source code for using the receiver with a Windows PC and carry out some experiments in receiving common broadcast signals.
For our penultimate class, we will build on our experience from the previous class and will see how we can write our own code and make our own basic ‘frequency-agile' communications devices. We will also look at the different ways of accomplishing frequency discrimination and demodulation in preparation for the design criteria we will look at in our final class.
In our final class, we will begin to look at how a commercial design can spring from the basic building blocks that we have investigated and experimented with this week. We will look at some common commercial SDR designs and applications as well as some of the test challenges we meet in the design and testing of SDR systems. We will also look at some future projects that we can accomplish with our simple lab dongle for further learning.
Charles J. Lord, PE is an embedded systems consultant and trainer with over 40 years' experience in system design and development in medical, military, and industrial applications. For the last twelve years, he has specialized in the integration of communication protocols into clients' products, including USB, Ethernet, and low-power wireless including ZigBee, 6LoWPAN, LoRa, and Thread. He has taught classes in these protocols for Freescale, Renesas, various universities and conferences including ESC and Arm TechCon. He has been a design partner with Freescale/NXP, Microchip, and Renesas. He also teaches webinars for various clients on IoT and embedded systems topics. He earned his BS in electrical engineering from N.C. State University in Raleigh, N.C. and provides training and consulting services through his company, Blue Ridge Advanced Design, in Asheville, N.C. He is a licensed professional engineer in NC and a senior member of the IEEE. In his volunteer work at the IEEE, he has served at many levels from local to regional to board committees. He is currently the chair of the IEEE Western NC Section, NC Council and was general chair of IEEE SoutheastCon 1995 and 2017