Software defined radio: single-input multiple-output communication demonstrator

This master thesis has been commissioned by the Swedish Defence Research Agency and is one of four parts in the project Tactical Communications for Urban Warfare. The project aims at suggesting methods and equipment suitable for soldiers in international operations on a tactical level by improving information gathering and information transmission. The purpose of the master thesis is to by practical means demonstrate the benefits with MIMO systems, either by increasing the transmission capacity or by increasing the availability. The master thesis is divided into three different parts: (1) feasibility study, (2) the development of a demonstrator in hardware and software, and (3) demonstrations and presentations. The demonstrator is built with GNU Radio software running on two Linux machines with a Universal Software Radio Peripheral as RF front end. MIMO spatial diversity has been implemented in a receiver in order to demonstrate the benefits with MIMO. The experiments show that the bit error is reduced by two thirds compared to an ordinary SISO receiver.