Università Roma Tre

1. Introduction to SDR technology:
Basic concepts, software requirements and reconfigurability.
Benefits, ideal architecture and definitions.

2. RF implementation issues:
Receiver front-end, characteristics and topologies, transmitter architecture.
Noise and distorsions in the RF chain.
Link-budget analysis and high-level requirements.

3. Analog to digital conversion and related issues:
Quantization noise, jitter and aperture uncertainty.
Performance requirements of the hardware devices, DSP and FPGA.

4. Spectral analysis:
Continuous-time signal sampling, DFT and FFT.
Pass-band sampling, Hilbert transform, envelope and analytic signal.
Spectral analysis and non-parametric estimation of the power spectrum (periodogram, Bartlett method, Welch method, ...).
Use of FFT in spectrum estimation.
Time-frequency signals analysis.
Introduction to Matlab.
Excercises in Matlab (spectral estimation).
Excercises in Matlab (time-frequency signals analysis).

5. Signals modulation:
Overview on analog and digital modulations.
Excercises in Matlab (modulations).

6. SDR devices:
Architecture and operating scheme of the devices RTL-SDR and Analog-Device Adalm-Pluto.
Introduction to the use of Matlab, Simulink and GNURadio for SDR applications.
SDR laboratory (use of the devices RTL-SDR and Analog-Device Adalm-Pluto for signals acquisition).

7. Cognitive Radios and cognitive radio networks:
Basic definitions and concepts, cognitive cycle, spectrum sensing, spectrum mobility, spectrum management, spectrum decision.
Excercises in Matlab (application of spectrum sensing techniques).

8. Cognitive radar:
Radar working principles and basic concepts; introduction to the cognitive radar.

[1] Paul Burns, Software Defined Radio for 3G, Artech House, 2003.
[2] Tuttlebee, Walter HW, ed. Software Defined Radio: Enabling Technologies, John Wiley & Sons, 2003.
[3] John Bard, Vincent J. Kovarik Jr., Software Defined Radio: the Software Communications Architecture, Vol. 6. John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
[4] Stewart, Robert W., et al. Software Defined Radio using MATLAB & Simulink and the RTL-SDR, Strathclyde Academic Media, 2015.
[5] Fabio Rocca, Elaborazione Numerica dei Segnali, Cusl, 2009.
[6] Petre Stoica and Randolph L. Moses, Spectral Analysis of Signals, 2005.
[7] Francois Auger, Patrick Flandrin, Paulo Goncalves, and Olivier Lemoine, Time-Frequency Toolbox for use with MATLAB, 1995-1996.

It will also provided the slides of the lectures and the codes of the exercises carried out during the course.