Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Implementation of dynamic spectrum access

[Tom Rondeau]

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Yang <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi all,

I am recently doing a project on gnu radio and usrp2. My goal is to implement DSA: let Tx sense some bands, choose available one by energy detection, then tune the usrp2 to this frequency and transmit a signal.

This might sound quite simple and basic for you, but I find it very hard to get started. I have tried some ways:

1. To write blocks for GRC: 

I have written a energy detection block find no way to realize the band switching function. Also, my energy detection block can only sense the signal USRP2 received from a fixed frequency (i.e. from usrp2_source block). How could I change the frequency during the detection? I cannot think of a way to make the one-way flow of GRC to do some feedback functions.

2. To extend/modify usrp_spectrum_sense.py:

I cannot figure out what is going on in gr_bin_statistic block (even with the detailed explanation from Firas): dose it just copy data from FFT and window block and save them in a .dat file? If it can generate the raw file, what is happening in the main_loop and m.data? Is m.data a file too? 

Sorry for so much words but I feel I am totally lost in scripts. I am still new to this and I cannot find a place to dive into and get work done. I believe there should be some quite simple and straightforward way to realize DSA. Would anyone point a way for me to go?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

-- 
Yang
Sent with Sparrow

The IEEE DySPAN conference (which just finished) has had many demos and papers about realizing DSA using GNU Radio. If you have access to the IEEE proceedings, you should find various references to people who have built GNU Radio programs for this purpose, at least as far back as the 2007 conference. You might find some useful ideas from any papers published or the websites of the demonstrators.

Having done some of this myself, I would say that you could have a thread operating in Python that is waiting for a message from a GNU Radio sink block. The message would contain some information about the spectrum usage that you could then use to retune the USRP sink. So the retuning is done in the Python domain and not directly from a GR block.

A more complicated (but possibly more elegant) method would be to use the message passing interface. You would set it up so that a work function would make some decision on the free channel that would send a message to the USRP sink to change frequencies. The most difficult part of this is due to our lack of documentation and examples of using the messages.

Tom