Overview

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Infrastructure

Scientific Contributions

Research Prototypes

Wireless Coffee Seminar

Broadband Wireless & Sensor Networks

B-WiSE Infrastructure

Short-Range Wireless (SRW) technologies are expected to play an important role in future communications and information systems, the so called “Systems Beyond 3G” or, equivalently, 4G infrastructure. A variety of SRW links will offer peak speeds ranging from a few kilo-bits per second (kbps) of up to several Mbps to many closely spaced users - at very low cost and with very low power. In its base set of applications, SRW technologies will provide: 1) cable less connections among the portable devices people wear and carry daily; 2) connectivity among the various appliances, communication and entertaining devices in the home, e.g., cell phones, headsets, PDAs, laptops, digital cameras, audio and video players, health monitoring devices, various sensors, etc; and, 3) wireless communication in a self-organizing network of power-sensitive sensing devices which can be used in various application areas, e.g., military communications, health care, monitoring of disaster areas and the wildlife, manufacturing automation, etc.
Short-Range Wireless is a focal point of AIT's research. In addition to the extensive R&D work in the field, the B-WiSE group is developing an integrated wireless infrastructure at AIT comprising several WLAN, Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) and Sensor Networks (based on both standard, as well as in-house developed sensor nodes) to facilitate its study and system level evaluation of secure, broadband wireless and sensor networks. For Wireless Sensor Networks Mica2, Micaz and Mica dot from Crossbow and Firefly from Carnegie Mellon University are used.  For the antenna designing the B-WiSE group uses the Electromagnetic Simulator IE3D from Zeland Inc. Matlab and Simulink from Mathworks are used for the implementation and evaluation of the routing protocols. AIT has licences for these software tools. B-WiSE Group also has a Software Defined Radio (SDR) solution based on the SMT8036 hardware platform from Sunfdance and full SW tools for Windows and Linux environment . In addition to this, it includes full integration and compatibility with Simulink/Mathworks tools for simulation and DSP/VHDL code generation.


                       





The SMT8036 is a PCI system based on 3 main modules: C64xx-based module (SMT365-4-1) combined with a dual high-speed ADC/DAC module (SMT370), both plugged on a PCI carrier board (SMT310Q).
SMT365-4-1 characteristics:

• TMS320C6416 processor running at 600MHz
• Six 20MB/s communication ports (comm.-ports)
• 4MB of ZBTRAM (133MHz)
• 8MByte Flash ROM for boot code and FPGA programming
• Global expansion connector
• High bandwidth data I/O via 2 Sundance High-speed Buses (SHB).

SMT370 characteristics:

• Two 14-bit ADCs sampling at up to 105MHz,
• Dual 16-bit TxDAC sampling at up to 400MHz (interpolation),
• Two Sundance High-speed Bus (SHB) connectors,
• Two 20 MegaByte/s communication ports,
• Low-jitter on-board system clock,
• Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA,
• 50-Ohm terminated analogue inputs and outputs, external triggers and clocks via MMBX (Huber and Suhner) connectors,
• User defined pins for external connections,
• Compatible with a wide range of Sundance SHB modules,
• TIM standard compatible,
• Default FPGA firmware implementing all the functions described along this documentation.

The SMT8036 is a demonstration software for the evaluation of the SMT365-4-1 and SMT370 modules. It can be used for prototyping 3G systems and high-speed data acquisition system with or without digital processor. This document is an installation guide for the SMT8036 demonstration system.
The data flow can be displayed on the host in real-time, thanks to highly optimized PCI drivers and tools. The Simulation and VHDL/DSP Code Generation tool box are compatible with Simulink and its integration is a fundamental and powerful tool for engineering and scientific work in model based and system-level designs.
Modularity, flexibility and scalability are design features that become even more important with the increasing complexity of real-time embedded systems. Moreover, the ability to build and simulate system building blocks rapidly is essential to leave more time to focus on algorithms and proof of concepts. However, there is the need to acquire a PC from Sundance to host the two SDR kits and reassure that there will be no incompatibility issues between the software tools that AIT has and the SDR hardware platform.

Apart from the SDR platform, B-WiSE group owns stand alone DSP platforms (SBC62) which are used for Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) measurements as they are palced in stand alone systems that have 4 RF I/O. The SBC62 is a high-performance, DSP-based controller featuring dual OMNIBUS I/O module sites, 32 bits of digital I/O, high-speed FIFOPort, RS232 and USB interface. This 160 mm x 100 mm card operates independently from a host PC allowing it to be freely embedded into custom target systems to perform autonomous data acquisition or control functions. The SBC62 is perfect for a wide variety of applications requiring fast, multichannel data I/O coupled with onboard processing as it can support 1 GFLOPS/1600 MIPS.
The SBC62 features include:

• 200 MHz TMS320C6201 processor.
• 4Mbit Bootable Flash ROM
• Optional external one wait-state SDRAM memory pools.
• FIFOPort digital I/O expansion capability.
• OMNIBUS I/O expansion compatible (two available slots).
• 32 bits of digital I/O.
• Two high speed serial port connectors.
• RS232 serial port.
• Universal Serial Bus (USB) port.
• External mux board control connectors (compatible with external TERM board).
• JTAG hardware emulation support.

DAC40 daughter card.
The DAC40 OMNIBUS module gives the target processor card four channels of very high speed 40 MHZ, 14-bit resolution digital input to analog output conversion (D/A). This makes the DAC40 module well suitable for use in high-speed signal and arbitrary waveform generation, communications, and control systems. The DAC40 module uses four Analog Devices AD9764 D/As (one for each channel) along with the necessary output buffering, allowing for independent channel control. The AD9464 features 72 dB total harmonic distortion and a spurious free dynamic range of 75 dB, which is ideal for communications applications. The output is +/- 2V (max) into a 50-ohm load, which is DC accurate and can be calibrated.
ADC daughter card.
The A4D1 OMNIBUS module provides the target card processor with four channels of very high speed 10 MHz, 14-bit resolution analog input to digital output conversion (A/D). In addition to a single channel of very high speed 10 MHz, 14- bit resolution digital input to analog output conversion (D/A). This makes it well suited for high-speed data acquisition applications, transient capture, data processing, and control systems. The A4D1 module uses two pairs of Analog Devices AD9240 A/Ds and one AD9774 D/A to provide for excellent dynamic range over a wide input bandwidth.
The A/D’s use a novel four stage pipelined architecture as well as a wideband sample-and-hold amplifier making them well suited for direct IF down conversion extended to 45 MHz. The A/D delivers 10 MHz data from a pipeline, which is only four samples deep, resulting in low data latency. In addition, each A/D channel has gain/offset error adjustment for accurate measurements.
MMDS RF modules.
MMDS RF modules are used as follows:

• Transmitter: 2 RF modules used for up-sampling the baseband analog signal to the MMDS frequency bands which is from 2.5 GHz to 2.7 GHz.
• Receiver: 3 RF modules used for down-sampling the received signal to analog baseband signal
  Thunderbolt GPS synchronization unit.

The GPS unit is used at the transmitter and at the receiver to fully synchronize the transmitted with the received signal.
RF Filters.
RF filter are used between the RF modules and the antennas

Some representative figures of the B-Wise’s equipment are following.