Getting Started with Software-Defined Radio (SDR)

The Ettus USRP B205mini-I is a flexible and compact platform for software-defined radio applications. Learn more this platform, including its USRP™ Hardware Driver (UHD) free and open-source software driver and how to get started with an SDR FM receiver.

Ettus USRP B205mini-i was designed by Ettus Research™ and provides a wide frequency range (70 MHz to 6 GHz) and a user-programmable, industrial-grade Xilinx Spartan-6 XC6SLX150 FPGA. USRPs can both transmit and receive RF signals.

The RF front end uses the Analog Devices AD9364 RFIC transceiver with 56 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth. The board is bus-powered by a high-speed USB 3.0 connection for streaming data to the host computer. The USRP B205mini-i also includes connectors for GPIO, JTAG, and synchronization with a 10 MHz clock reference or PPS time reference input signal.

The hardware is conveniently accessible through the USRP Hardware Driver (UHD). UHD provides both a C/C++ and Python API and offers cross-platform support for multiple industry standard development environments and frameworks, including RFNoC, GNU Radio, LabVIEW, and Matlab/Simulink.

The Ettus USRP B205mini-i comes with comprehensive documentation and strong support materials including getting started, videos, tutorials, and driver manual.

USRP Hardware Driver (UHD) API

UHD is the free & open-source software driver and API for the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP™) SDR platform, created and sold by Ettus Research. UHD supports all Ettus Research USRP™ hardware, including all motherboards and daughterboards, and the combinations thereof. UHD is primarily developed on Linux, but it’s also been tested for and supported by the following operating systems.

• Linux (Fedora and Ubuntu)
• Mac OS X (Intel)
• Windows 10

UHD can be used to build stand-alone applications with USRP™ hardware, or with third-party applications. Some common toolkits / frameworks are:

• GNU Radio
• NI LabVIEW
• MathWorks Simulink
• REDHAWK
• OpenBTS GSM
• Osmocom GSM
• Amarisoft LTE
• Software Radio Systems LTE

For technical documentation related to USRP™ hardware or UHD system design, check out the UHD and USRP manual. That is where you can find installation instructions, help on how to build UHD from source on different platforms, development guidelines and reference documentation as well as device usage guidance. The UHD source code is available on Ettus Research GitHub.

Implement Software Defined Radio FM Receiver

Getting Started Guide walk you through the design of an FM radio receiver using GNU Radio. You will learn how to install the software driver and GNU radio in Linux OS, run a real-time Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) example, and create an FM radio receiver from scratch.

Learn More

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