Software defined radio design for an IEEE 802.11A transceiver using open source Software Communications Architecture (SCA) implementation

Abstract

In this thesis, we present the design of a software defined radio (SDR) transceiver using Open Source SCA Implementation Embedded (OSSIE) as the software platform. Designing a SDR requires both an appreciation of the IEEE 802.11a (wireless Local Area Network at 5 GHz band) protocol standard as well as the understanding of the C++ and CORBA software tools available to implement the physical transmitter and receiver layers. For this work, the Incremental Development Model was chosen, which is comprised of three stages: Design, Develop and Verify. The advantage of this model is its incremental nature, which allows the developer to learn from earlier versions of the system. Implementing the IEEE 802.11a physical layer using OSSIE requires a total of 23 components, 12 different functionalities and 31 sequential input-output (I/O) processes for the transmitter, while the receiver is implemented with 18 components, 12 different functionalities and 20 sequential I/O processes. The completed transmitter and receiver layers are validated successfully according to test cases stipulated in the IEEE standard.