Implementation of FGPA based Channel Sounder for Large scale antenna systems using RFNoC on USRP Platform

Abstract: This paper concentrates on building a multi-antenna FPGA based Channel Sounder with single transmitter and multiple receivers to realize wireless propagation characteristics of an indoor environment. A DSSS signal (spread with a real maximum length PN sequence) is transmitted, which is correlated with the same PN sequence at each receiver to obtain the power delay profile . Multiple power delay profiles are averaged and the result is then sent to host. To utilize high bandwidth, the computationally expensive tasks related to generation and parallel correlation of PN sequences are moved to the FPGA present in each USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral). Channel sounder blocks were built using Vivado HLS and integrated with RFNoC (RF Network on Chip) framework, which were then used on USRP X310 devices.