Common Platform for Cognitive Radio
Wednesday, 03 February 2010 12:34
The Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center’s Software Defined Radio lab announced recently that it will work with the Navy Research Lab to transfer previous development done on the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) to the GNU Radio’s open source, free software environment.
Through the GNU platform, which is inexpensive and universally accessible, universities, contract companies and government agencies can use a common platform to advance the state of cognitive radio software. The transition to the GNU platform will help ease collaboration efforts with other organizations that frequently opt to use grassroots hardware for programming due to the comparably high-cost and limited accessibility of JTRS radios.
Additionally, the GNU platform will enable the SDR lab to conduct large lab tests and field tests, rather than having to simulate larger-scale network testing. The cost constraints associated with the JTRS radio prohibit larger-scale networking, limiting the number of radios they can test at one time.
Through funding provided by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Director of Defense, Research and Engineering, the SDR lab team will collaborate with the Navy Research Lab to start building a universal GNU radio test bed this year. Once the test-bed is completed, they will work together to make it remote-accessible using the Defense Research Engineering Network to house the software platform, allowing DoD organizations and external research partners to test their software on it from any location. ♦
