Acquisition and Development of a Cognitive Radio Based Wireless Monitoring and Surveillance Testbed for Future Battlefield Communications Research

During the funding period, a set of state-of-the-art software defined radio platforms are acquired, including 10 NI USRP-2932 400MHz approximately 4. 4GHz GPS Clock Software Radio Kit, 3 NI USRP-2942R 400MHZ approximately 4.4GHz with KINTEX-7 FPGA, and 3 NI USRP-2952R 400MHZ approximately 4.4GHZ with GPS. These software defined radio platforms provide the much needed infrastructure support for cognitive radio research. In addition, a commercial grade NI spectrum analyzer and vector signal generator have been acquired to serve as benchmark for validation and testing. A Dell PowerEdge R920 storage server is acquired for RF traces collection and storage. In addition, 10 graduate students and myself participated in the USRPGNUradio training by the National Instruments Inc. on October 16-17, 2014. We have gained valuable knowledge and hands-on experiences of experimental systems and software implementations of cognitive radio using COTS devices. A distributed RF traces collection and wireless surveillance test bed and a hierarchical wireless network test bed have been implemented and currently under testing. Many students actively participated in the projects and obtain valuable hands-on experience. The students also demonstrated the test beds to Dr. Robert Ulman, program manager at the Network Science Division of the Army Research Office, during a site visit on October 29 2014.