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A Software Defined Radio-Based Prototype for Wireless Metrics Studies in IoT Applications

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Abstract

The spectrum has always been an essential resource of information for wireless communications. With the continued growth of Internet of things (IoT) and 5G, there is a demand to understand how the spectrum is used. One of the challenges of deploying IoT applications is the crowded spectrum in the unlicensed industrial scientific medical bands leading to rising coexistence problems between different wireless protocols. To overcome this congestion, hardware tools supporting spectrum sensing can be used to manage the spectrum more efficiently. In this context, this work presents a prototype that measures a set wireless metrics on raw wireless signals acquired with software defined radio (SDR) technology. This prototype aims to provide mechanisms to sense and monitor spectrum usage that can mitigate one of the issues that IoT faces, the interference being produced by having different technologies using at the same frequency channels. The prototype features configurable radio frequency parameter and programmable periodical tasks execution. It displays wireless metrics such as signal to noise ratio, cumulative density function and power spectral density. This prototype uses web and SDR technologies, highlighting the idea and feasibility of combining these two technologies. In addition, it demonstrates the possibility to obtain wireless metrics with a low-cost hardware based on open source tools in a platform where interaction, debugging and maintaining becomes intuitive and easier. Results of measurements of LoRa protocol signals are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the prototype.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Mr. Oussama Radi, student from the ENSEIRB-MATMECA-Bordeaux INP, France, for his collaboration in some technical aspects of this implementation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, Panama City, Panama

    Héctor Poveda, Kiara Navarro & Fernando Merchan

  2. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Edgar Ramos

  3. Continental AG, Hanover, Germany

    David González González

Authors
  1. Héctor Poveda
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  2. Kiara Navarro
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  3. Fernando Merchan
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  4. Edgar Ramos
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  5. David González González
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Correspondence to Héctor Poveda.

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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests.

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This work is partially supported by the Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (SENACYT) of Panama through the Project “RAPIDO-5G” (ITE15-021). In addition, it was made possible thanks to the support of the Sistema Nacional de Investigación (SNI) of SENACYT, Panama. 

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Poveda, H., Navarro, K., Merchan, F. et al. A Software Defined Radio-Based Prototype for Wireless Metrics Studies in IoT Applications. Wireless Pers Commun 120, 2291–2306 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-021-08281-x

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