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Implementation of FM Transceiver using Software Defined Radio (SDR)

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Vidya Pratishthan’s, College of Engineering, Baramati
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 © 2017 IJEDR | Vo lu me 5, Issue 2 | ISSN: 2321-9939

Implementation of FM Transceiver using

Software Defined Radio (SDR)
Devidas Kushnure, Murtaza Jiniyawala, Sushama Molawade, Snehal Patil

1
Assistant Professor,2 Student,3 Student, 4 Student
Depart ment of Electronics and Telecommun ication Engineering ,
VPKBIET, Baramat i, India.

_______________________________________________________________________________________ ___________

Abstract—In this Paper we discusses about recent trends in wireless Communication system design using Software Defined Radio
(SDR). Here the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) B200 board is u sed to design Frequency Modulation (FM)
Transmitter and Receiver. The audiofiletransmitted from the USRP B200 board and it is received on the FM receiver of mobile
phone as well as on the USRP B200 board. The system has been designed using the GNU Radio which is open source software. In
the demon stration the audio file is tran smitted u sing Wideband Frequency Modulation (WBFM). The spectrum ofFM is from 88
MHz to 108 MHz within this spectrum wecan transmit and receive the FM signals. The results showthat the audio file transmitted is
received on the FM Receiver of Mobile Phone as well as USRP B200 Board Receiver. The spectrum received is ju st like the
transmitted spectrum.

Keywords: Software defined radio (SDR), GNU Radio,USRP, Wideband Frequency Modulation (WBFM).

___________________________________________________________________________________________ _______

I. INTRO DUCTION
One of the most important discussions in current era is Software Defined Radio (SDR) which provides researchers with a
powerful and flexible wireless communicat ions experimentation platform. SDR will allow the programmer to realize various
communicat ion systems. SDR is digital programmab le platform wh ich has ability to realize the structure of the device with
high mobility, reconfigurab ility and flexib ility. Every SDR is comp rised of software as well as hardware. In this paper, we
consider GNU radio software coupled with universal software radio peripheral (USRP) hardware. SDR is radio
communicat ion system where elements have been implemented by software on personal computer. The practical research
was very costly in terms of time as well as money. Both can be saved by using SDR. The translation of the signal processing
into software which is run by GNU software on personal computer opens up a huge number of possibilit ies at an affordable
price. Now we can change and set the parameters that were embedded in software and check out the final results. SDR will
allo w us to analyze and change every parameter in the system.
In this paper, we imp lement the system for t ransmission of the audio file and its reception on mobile phone using GNU ra d io
software [1] [4] [7]. GNU radio p rovides the data flow abstraction and the fundamental concepts are signal processing blocks
and connections between them.

II. BACKGROUND
A. GNU Radio
The GNU Rad io is a set of software signal processingbuilding blocks that allows a user to create their o wnsoftware radio [6].
It is free/open source software that offerslibrary of more than 1000 processing blocks to imp lementvarious software radio
applications using a low cost externalRF hard ware (USRP). The GNU radio allo ws vario usreal time SDR applications to be
performed on a singleUSRP board. The required signal processing and designingof various mixers, amp lifiers, filters,
spectrum analyzers,modulators, demodulators etc., are carried out with GNUradio on a PC/laptop using Linu x [3]. It is
mostly used foracademic and in the commercial environ ments to supportvarious wireless communication researches and to
carry putreal world radio applications. Since GNU is a software toolit is capable of handling the digital data [1]. In GNU
radiothe blocks can be created using high level programminglanguage Python and the high level signal processing blocksare
created using C++. These modules are called fro mPython using SWIG(Simplified Wrapper and Interface
Generator)interface. In this paper the GNU schematics for FMtransmitter are shown.

B. Software Defined Radio (SDR)

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is defined as a radio platform that uses various software techniques on digitized radiosignals
[2]. Therefore, in the process of receiving chain, bes ides flexib ility, the main of SDR is to turn the hardware problems into
software problems and allo ws working in more accessible do main [6]. SDR is div ided into two subsystems: The hardware
defined subsystem could consist of an antenna, an ADC and the second is Software Defined subsystem.For proper working,
the device should satisfy the following three conditions:

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1) The antenna should be capable to operate at the frequency of all rad io signals [2]
2) A DC and DA C should operate at the sampling rate greater than twice the frequency of signal [2].
3) To handle the signal processing of all rad io signals, the software subsystem should have enough processing powe r [2].

Fig 1: Block Diagram Representation of SDR

In SDR, hardware defined subsystem consists of wideband radio which takes the portion of the spectrum and converts it to
IF before the digitizat ion process [7]. The software defined subsystem receives the digitized wideband signal and then send
to the down converters to isolate the carrier. Finally demod ulation is performed. Programmab le devices are comb ined to
compose the software defined subsystem, such that connection between them is fast enough to transfer the DSP data [7].

C. USRP
Universal Software Peripheral (USRP) is Universal hardware that can be accessed using software wh ich is GNU Rad io
software on LINUX platform [1]. Hardware main ly consists of three parts. First one is the radio frequency (RF) frontend
which transmits and receive the radio signals. Second one acts as a bridge between analog blo ck and digital block. All signal
processing is done within the third block in software form.
The analog RF signal can be received or transmitted by antennas or directly connected via SMA connectors to the RF
frontend called Daughter boards [8]. USRP has various daughterboards which are vary fro m each other depending on their
operating frequency. These daughterboard are connecting to the motherboard and acts as RF frontend of USRP. The analog
signals are converted to digital samples in USRP in motherboard an d then downconverted within the FPGA. Sample rate is
also varied by doing decimation. Then sampled data by the FPGA is sent to the host by USB. GNU Rad io framework
controls the further signal processing capabilit ies [8].

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Fig 2: USRPB200 Board

III. IMPLEMENTATIO N
A. Implementation of FM Transmitter
In this section we are going to discuss the imp lementation of the FM Transmitter using Wideband Frequency Modulation
Technique. In wideband frequency modulation technique the highest frequency component of a modulating signal is greater
than that of the peak frequency deviation of modulated signal[4][7].

B. Frequency Modulation (FM)

In the signal processing and telecommunicat ions, frequency modulation is encoding of the information in a carrier wave by
varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. In the FM radio broadcasting of an audio signal, representing the voice or
music, the difference between the carrier frequency and its center frequency is proportional to that of the modulating signal
[7]. Frequency Modulation is widely used in radio transmission because it has a larger signal-to-noise ratio and therefore it
rejects radio frequency interference better that that of Amplitude Modulation signal. For this reason, the audio is broadcast
over FM radio [4].

C. Implementation using GRC

In the implementation of the FM transmitter, the modulation technique used here is wideband frequency modulation. The fig
3 shows the detailed flowchart of the FM transceiver.

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Fig 3: GRC Flowchart fo r FM Transmitter and Receiver

Here our aim is to transmit an audio file and receive it on a mobile phone and on same USRP Board. So we are going to use
a file source which is a wav source file. In the Wav file source block we have to choose the input file source that is stored on
our PC.
Fig 4 shows the graph for the Wav file before giving it to the WBFM Transmit block.

Fig 4: Signal before WBFM

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Then this input wav file is sent to the WBFM Transmit block where the audio rate is predefined. Here quadrature rate is set
in the mult iples of 48; this rate is the outgoing sampling rate whereas 48 kHz is incoming sampling rate.
1. Audio rate: 48 kHz
2. Quadrature Rate: 48 kHz * 4 = 192 kHz
3. Tua: 75u
The modulated signal is shown in fig 5 belo w.

Fig 5: Signal after W BFM

Now, the sampled signal fro m the WBFM Transmit block is sent to the Rational Resampler block where we are doing some
frequency conversion. For examp le, the Audio Sink requires lower frequency and USRP block requires the higher frequency
then this block converts the frequency by doing some interpolation or decimat ion as per the requirements. The output of the
Rational Resamp ler is given to one of the input of the multip ly block and the second input of the multiply block is a cosine
signal with a sample rate of 192 kHz. Here the carrier signal is used for proper transmission. Now these multip lied signal is
given to the USRP sin k fro m where these signals are send to the destination using wireless mediu m. Here we use 100 MHz
as center frequency but it can be changed using freq_selection slider. The antenna is connected to TX/RX.
The fig 6 shows the FM broadcasting time domain plot

Fig 6: Time Do main Plot

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The fig 7 shows the FFT plot of the output signal. The audio file is transmitted at the frequency of 100M Hz.

Fig 7: FFT Plot of the Output Signal

Now for the imp lementation of the Receiver, the input source taken is USRP block with the center frequency of 100MHz
which can be adjusted by changing the parameters. Here the sampling rate is 192 KHz and the gain can be changed by the
slider with min=0 and max=50. The antenna is connected to TX/RX in daughter board. Now the output of the USRP board is
given to a filter. Here the filter passes the signal below the cutoff frequency and removes the higher frequency. Now the
filtered output is given to the WBFM Receive block. Th is block demodulates the signal fro m the data stream and we get the
original data stream that was send by the sender. Output of the WBFM block is send to the rational re -sampler b lock. Here
some interpolation and decimat ion is done on the data stream according to the desired rate. Finally this signal is given to the
Audio Sink for listening the sound of the receiver channel. The fig 8 shows the

Fig 8: Receiver Output

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IV. MO BILE TUNING

For listening the transmitted audio signal on the mobile phone we need to tune the mobile radio to the transmitting frequency that
is 100M Hz. Fig 9 shows the setup of the mobile phone.

Fig 9: Mobile with FM Rad io

Fig 10: Tuning to 100M Hz on Mobile FM

The fig.10 shows the tuning of the mobile phone to the 100MHz frequency which is our transmitting frequency. By tuning to this
frequency we are able to hear the transmitted audio file.

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V. HARDWARE SETUP
The fig 11 shows the complete setup of the Audio Transmitter and Receiver system along with the reception of the audio file on
the mobile phone.

Fig 11: Experimental Setup

VI. CO NCLUSION
In this paper, we demonstrated the usability of SDR to imp lement the communication system. The WBFM system imp lemen ted
here gives the concept of Software Defined Radio with the help of USRPB200 as a hardware tool and GNU Rad io as a software
tool. We imp lemented a communication system with GNU rad io software with USRP and we successfully transmit the audio file
fro m USRP board and received it on the FM of mobile phone and USPR board. The audio can be received upto the distance of
100 meters clearly.
Hence it is clear that one can implement other communication systems using SDR and analyze the performance. Therefore Using
SDR it is possible to design prototype of the Communicat ion systems and possible to verify the real time performance of the
system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Authors would like to thank the Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune for providing financial support to this project. We al so
would like to thank department of Electronics and Teleco mmun ication VPKBIET, Baramati for providing necessary support.

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