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Design Analysis of Digital Modulation Schemes with GNU Radio

Conference Paper · May 2015

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 Second INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORKS, INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS

Design Analysis of Digital Modulation Schemes with

GNU Radio

Jay Kumar Lunagariya Kenil Gokhruwala Khyati Vachhani

Student, Electronics and Student, Electronics and Assistant Professor, Electronics and
Communication Communication Communication
Institute of Technology, Nirma Institute of Technology, Nirma Institute of Technology, Nirma
University University University
Ahmedabad, India Ahmedabad, India Ahmedabad, India
11bec037@nirmauni.ac.in 11bec026@nirmauni.ac.in khyati.vachhani@nirmauni.ac.in

Abstract— In this paper we represent the basic idea about the getting the code as close to the antenna as possible. The
Software Defined Radio (SDR) and have demonstrated the software defined radio consist of a specific software which is
fundamental digital modulation schemes like Amplitude Shift
GNU Radio [2] and hardware as USRP [3]. The basic block
Keying (ASK), Frequency Shift Keying (FSK), and Phase Shift
Keying (PSK) using GNU Radio Companion. Gnu Radio can also diagram of software defined radio is given as follows.
be used in real time communication with the help USPR or RTL- Accordingly, the Software Defined Radio is divided into 3
SDR which are composed of FPGA. Combination of GNU Radio blocks, starting with the RF frontend we have an antenna for
Companion and USRP can be used to replace the traditional the reception of RF signals and USRP daughter boards which
hardware radios. serves as an interface to the analog RF domain. The second
block contains the main hardware part which consists of
Keywords—GNU Radio, SDR, RTL-SDR
USRP motherboard and does the conversion from the analog
I. INTRODUCTION to the digital domain. The last block is the software part which
In today’s world all the communication processes are done is done completely on PC.
on hardware but the assembly of the proper hardware can many
times cause errors in the processing of signals. The hardware is
very costly moreover it is many times used only for a specific
process. The hardware is also not easily portable, as a result to
get away with all this problems researchers have come up with
Software Defined Radio or SDR [1] a complete software
implementation of hardware processes. SDR with its dynamic
nature of modifying the system parameters without actually
changing the hardware part is very effectively used today. So
SDR proves to be an effective solution to the very high cost
and limited flexibility of hardware based radios. We have
implemented some modulation scheme just to show the
effectiveness of SDR Communication concepts are based on
the mathematical models. Students can explore the Figure 1. SDR Block Diagram
communication concepts by modelling the circuits in SDR and
observing the behaviour of the circuit. SDR provides the A. Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP)
flexibility of wide range of parameters so students can observe The hardware part of Software Defined Radios is known
the effect of change of parameters and observe the as Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and was
corresponding waveform. Thus SDR proves to be a good developed by Matt Ettus. The current scenario of USRP is that
source of learning for students also. it is being developed by Ettus Research as open source
The paper starts with basic introduction to some important hardware and is being used in research labs and universities
concepts that are related to Software Defined Radio. The for educational purpose. The USRP is usually used as
second part includes the demonstration of the various schemes. ‘Transceiver’ and is powered with 6 VDC adapter and can be
The final part contains of conclusions and some description of connected to the computer using a USB 2.0 interface. The
the hardware implantation of the said modulation scheme. USRP mainly consists of a Motherboard that can support up to
4 Daughterboard which can be tuned at different frequencies
II. SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO which is generally from 0 to 2.9GHz. The Daughterboards
Software Defined Radio is a technique of turning the hardware represent the tuner component as an interchangeable
problems faced in communication into software problems and component which in contrast to the analog receiver are
 Second INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORKS, INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS

generally hardwired. Differentt daughterboards can be processing blocks connected together, describing
de a data flow.
combined to obtain a wide range of frequencies. Some of the The flowgraphs are written in C++ or Python. The GNU
daughterboards are transceiver whereas some of them are only Radio when implemented on an operating system is installed
transmit or receive only. The basic block diagram is as GNU Radio Companion (GRC).
represented as follows.
The basic flow structure of GNU Radio is shown as
follows, accordingly the GNU Radio has two major layers that
are used one is C++ and the other is Python. Low level codes
are written in C++ and consists of small signal processing.
The high level codes are written in Python which is an
interpretable language, it mainly does the work of connecting
the various signal blocks into what is known as ‘Flowgraphs’.
Python doesn’t require any additional compilation time so it is
mainly used for the rapid functioning of the flowgraphs.

Figure 2. USRP Architecture

B. RTL-SDR
The drawback of USRP is that its cost is way high so a
company called OsmoSDR [5] came up with a low cost
hardware known as the RTL-SDR. SDR. The RTLRTL-SDR uses
DVB-T T TV tuner dongle based on the RTL2832U chipset.
The RTL-SDR is often called as the DVB DVB-T SDR, RTL
dongle, RTL2832U or the “$20 Software Defined Radio”.
Figure 3.GNU Radio Architecture [6]
The RTL-SDR
SDR is based on the Realtek RTL2832U which
acts as a demodulator and USB interface plus a tuner IC II. DIGITAL MODULATION SCHEME
such as the R820T developed by Rafael Micro
Micro. The DVB-T The modulation scheme that are being discussed here
demodulator gives raw samples in place of demodulated are digital modulation schemes mainly Shift Keying in which
signals and as the chip is able to transmit raw I/Q samples the phase, amplitude or frequency of the signal is varied
to the host, as a result the DVB-T T dongle proves efficient keeping the other two constants. Starting with ASK we will be
for software defined purpose. The operating frequency of describing FSK and PSK.
the RTL2832U is from 64 to 1700MHz, with a sample rate
of 3.2MS/sec. This RTL2832U hardware when used with A. AMPLITUDE SHIFT KEYING (ASK)
GNU Radio Software requires a block in the GRC. Amplitude Shift Keyingg (ASK) is a digital
modulation scheme where the amplitude of the carrier wave
C. GNU RADIO is changed with respect to the amplitude
amplitud of the message
GNU Radio is a free and an open source software signal keeping the phase and frequency of the signal as
toolkit which is used to implement real time signal processing constant. Here we have used Binary Amplitude Shift
and also provides signal blocks to implement a particular Keying (BASK) which is similar to on-off
on keying. ASK is
scheme. The software environment when used with low cost defined using the following equation [7]:
external RF hardware such as the RTL-SDR
SDR gives us software
defined radios. Developed by Eric Blossom, GNU Radio  

    (1)
today is a basic and most important toolkit for software
defined radios. The main application of GNU Radio includes As shown in the GRC block diagram of ASK, here
educational purpose, wireless communication and real time we have multiplied the message signal i.e. square wave in
radio systems. GNU Radio is available as licensed version our case as our data is binary with the cosine wave i.e.
under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3. carrier wave. The multiplied signal is observed on the scope
The GNU Radio applications themselves are sink. The scope sink output shown below is the ASK
generally known as 'flowgraphs', which are a series of signal
 Second INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORKS, INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS

modulated wave. Demodulation ation of this ASK signal can be 1.After multiplying both the carrier frequency with the
done similar to Demodulation of AM. message signal they are added and the resultant signal is
As shown in the scope plot when the input data signal observed on the scope sink.
is 1 then output obtained is the cosine wave and when the As shown in the scope plot output of FSK we receive
input signal is 0 the output is also 0. Here our data signal is cosine wave of frequency
quency 1000 when the data signal is 1 and
a square wave of frequency 1000 hertz and peak amplitude cosine wave of frequency 10000 when data signal is 0. Here
of 1. The carrier signall used is cosine wave of frequency the sampling frequency used is 128000 hertz. The GRC Block
10000 hertz and peak amplitude of 1. The sampling diagram of BFSK and the scope sink output is shown below.
frequency here should be greater than twice the maximum
frequency of the data signal which in our case will be more
than 2000 hertz. Here we have used the sampling frequen
frequency
of 64000 hertz.

Figure 6. GRC Block Diagram of FSK

Figure 4. GRC Block Diagram of ASK

Figure 7. Modulated Output of FSK

C. PHASE SHIFT KEYING (PSK)
Figure 5. Modulated Signal of ASK Phase Shift Keying is a Digital modulation scheme
where the phase of the signal is varied, keeping the
frequency and the amplitude constant. In Binary Phase Shift
B. FREQUENCY SHIFT KEYING (FSK) Keying (BPSK) both the carrier signal are out of phase with
Frequency Shift Keying is the Digital modulation key each other. The carrier wave used here is cosine wave of
technique where different frequencies are used to transmit the 50000 hertz and peak amplitude of 1 and other is sine wave
data. For Binary Frequency Shift Keying (BFSK) two of 50000 hertz and peak amplitude of 1. Similar to BFSK
different frequencies are used to transmit two different signal here we represent signal 1 with a square wave of frequency
i.e. 0 and 1 as shown below 5000 hertz and signal 0 by subtracting the same square
wave from 1. Here as shown in the GRC block diagram
     (2) below we have multiplied the carrier signals with the signal
     (3) 0 and 1 and observed the resultant output on the scope
sco sink.

In our case we have used one carrier as a cosine wave     (4)
of frequency 1000 hertz and peak amplitude of 1 and another   
   (5)
as cosine wave of frequency 10000 hertz and peak amplitude Here symbol 1 will be represented by s1(t) and
of 1. The signal 1 is represented by a square wave and signal 0 symbol 0 will be represented by s2(t) as shown below in
an be obtained by subtracting the same square wave from figure 9:
 Second INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NETWORKS, INFORMATION & COMMUNICATIONS

IV. CONCLUSION
SDR is a technique which can be used to replace the
current hardware when used along with USRP. Since USRP
being costly, RTL-SDR
SDR seems to be a more efficient
ef option.
This concept of SDR using GNU Radio and RTL-SDR also
proves to be helpful for students for learning the concepts
practically. Here we have used SDR (Software Defined Radio)
as a platform to implement Communication circuits by
demonstrating fundamental digital modulation schemes like
ASK, FSK and PSK and observed the corresponding waveform
wa
on time domain.

Figure 8. GRC Block Diagram of PSK V. REFERENCES

[1] Bard, John and Kovarik, Vincent, “Software Defined Radio: The
Software Communications Architecture,” Wiley Series in Software
Radio, 2007
[2] GNU radio: tools for exploring the radio frequency spec-
E.Blossom, ”GNU
trum”, Linux Journal, vol. 2004, no. 122, June 2004.
[3] Ettus Research, LLC, http://www.ettus.com/,
http://www.ettus.com/ Available Online
Retrieved 2008-10-21.
[4] http://sdr.osmocom.org,, Available Online
[5] D. Casey Tucker, Gene A. Tagliarini, ‘Prototyping with GNU Radio and
the USRP – Where to begin’, Southeastcon’09, pp. 50-54,
50 March 2009.
[6] R P Singh,, S D Sapre, ‘Communication System – Analog and Digital’,
Tata McGraw Hill, Second Edition, 2008
Figure 9. Modulated Output of PSK

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