Analýza softwarových nástrojů pro vývoj SDR aplikací

Abstract

This master's thesis analyses software tools for the development of Software Defined Radio (SDR) applications, with emphasis on a practical comparison of the proprietary NI LabVIEW environment and the open-source GNU Radio toolkit. The theoretical part covers the principles of SDR, the NI USRP-2920 and Ettus USRP B206mini-i hardware platforms, the architecture of both software ecosystems including the USRP Hardware Driver layer, and the technical fundamentals of FM broadcasting with the RDS system and the digital DAB standard. The practical part presents a parallel implementation of the same broadcasting application in both environments — an FM receiver with RDS decoding support — and additionally a fully functional DAB+ receiver for the Czech public broadcasting multiplexes implemented in GNU Radio. The LabVIEW implementation includes a partially functional RDS decoder; the absence of an equivalent of the gr-dab module in the LabVIEW ecosystem led to the conclusion that implementing the DAB+ task in this environment exceeds the scope of a master's thesis. The principal finding of the work is that the difference between the two environments is not determined by their language or architectural properties, but by the difference in the availability of community-maintained DSP components — with direct consequences for tool selection in specific tasks. The thesis culminates in a concrete proposal for integrating the developed applications into the MIKT and MTLK courses at the Department of Cybernetics and Biomedical Engineering at VŠB-TUO, complemented by a comparative laboratory exercise.