Channel Sounding for the Masses: Low Complexity GNU 802.11b Channel Impulse Response Estimation

Author

Maas, Dustin ; Firooz, Mohammad H. ; Zhang, Junxing ; Patwari, Neal ; Kasera, Sneha K.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

Volume

11

Issue

1

fYear

2012

fDate

1/1/2012 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

8

Abstract

New techniques in cross-layer wireless networks are building demand for ubiquitous channel sounding, that is, the capability to measure channel impulse response (CIR) with any standard wireless network and node. Towards that goal, we present a software-defined IEEE 802.11b receiver and CIR measurement system with little additional computational complexity compared to 802.11b reception alone. The system implementation, using the universal software radio peripheral (USRP) and GNU Radio, is described and compared to previous work. We validate the CIR measurement system and present the results of a measurement campaign which measures millions of CIRs between WiFi access points and a mobile receiver in urban and suburban areas.

Keywords

channel estimation; communication complexity; mobile radio; radio receivers; software radio; transient response; wireless LAN; wireless channels; CIR measurement system; GNU radio; IEEE 802.11b reception alone; WiFi access point; computational complexity; cross-layer wireless network; low complexity GNU 802.11b channel impulse response estimation; mobile receiver; software-defined IEEE 802.11b receiver; standard wireless network; ubiquitous channel sounding; universal software radio peripheral; Bandwidth; Channel estimation; Correlation; Estimation; Field programmable gate arrays; Receivers; Wireless communication; GNU radio; IEEE 802.11b; RF propagation; Radio channel measurement; channel impulse response; multipath;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1536-1276

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TWC.2011.111611.091774

Filename

6093920