Getting Started

In this chapter you'll learn how to set-up your computer so as to be able to run the MSR in simulation mode. If you want to work with the MSR, you should read this chapter. First you have to make sure that all necessary software is installed on your system, then you have to download the necessary package, compile it, and finally you can run the example.

Prerequisites

The MSR runs without problems on a linux-system. For the simulation-part, an installation of the RTLinux is not necessary. The MSR relies on some new packages, like a new linker and a QT-package. These should be available with RH7.3 and newer, Mandrake 8.2 and newer as well as Debian 3/testing and newer. The most common missing programs are:

• [linker]check with ld -version whether it is something newer or equal than 12.13.90
• [qt]check with qmake -version and see if the version of QT is bigger or equal than 3.0
• [libqwt]is used to display the graphics on screen. If you don't have it installed, ask your system-administrator to install it. Alternatively you can also install it in your home-directory.

If one of these is missing, please contact your system administrator or install the missing packages.

Installing the MSR

It is possible to use the MSR without the proper RF-hardware. For this you will use a channel-simulation. In this section you learn how to download and compile the MSR.

Download the software

From http://lcmpc10.epfl.ch/Menu/Download you can download the latest version of the MSR, which has a name like msr-*.tgz Once it is on your computer, you can place it in a convenient directory and untar it using tar xzf msr-*tgz This will create a directory named Main and a lots of subdirectories and files in there. Generally you will find README files in most of the directories. They are useful if you need to know what goes on in this special place. Do not hesitate to read them.

Compile the software

The software consists of two parts: the graphic display and the signal-processing modules. For the graphical part, you have to change into Main/Tools/Visualize and run qmake visualize.pro followed by a make. If everything goes well, you should have an executable called visualize.

After this you can change in the Main directory and run make there. Supposing that everything goes well, you're ready to run the examples.

Common errors

While compiling 'Visualize' I get 'libqwt not found'

Make sure that libqwt is installed and check eventually the path in visualize.pro.

Running the examples

There are a couple of pre-defined radios in the subdirectory Radios/. The most simple is in Radios/Simple/. Using the following commands, you can display both the BS and the MS of this simple example:

cd Radios/Simple

make server

make show_bsms 

If the installation of the MSR has been carried out successfully, you should see now two windows popping up, showing the basestation that emits the synchronisation-signal, as well as the mobile-station that listens to this signal.

You can also run the other examples that you find in this directory, namely Multiuser and LDPC just to get an idea what the software-radio is all about. And remember: the same c-code also runs in real-time on RF-hardware!