Usage

At EPFL, the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, we use the software-radio both in class and for research purposes.

This chapter gives an overview of what we did with the software-radio until the end of 2003, what we are doing now in winter/spring 2004, and what we are planning to do during the rest of this year.

Past

In class, it has been used to demonstrate the different parts of a radio-transmission, such as modulation, spreading, coding and matched filtering.

For research, we used it succesfully to demonstrate the usability of LDPC-codes over the air and to verify their theoretical performance.

Present

We are looking in the challenges arising from MIMO transmission that is coded with LDPC-codes. There are timing constraints to be solved, as well as theoretical challenges with regard to the MIMO channel to be met.

Future

Different projects for the software-radio are in preparation. These include a better matched filter (channel estimation), ZigBee implementation and the obligatory GPS-decoder.