Software Defined Radio (SDR) for Deep Space Communication

Abstract: In this thesis, a Software Defined radio (SDR) transceiver has been simulated and implemented in compliance with the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) standards. This transceiver has been implemented using the GNU Radio software architecture and its implementation has been carried out on the Ettus Research N210 Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). The work includes the channel codes: convolutional, Reed Solomon and concatenated codes. Frame synchronization using the CCSDS 32 bits sync marker has been discussed and implemented. An efficient and simple technique for the node synchronization of the Viterbi decoder has been developed. After the implementation, the performance curve for each channel code has been compared with the performance curve recommended by the CCSDS standard for the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel with Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation. At the end, results for the hardware testing in the lab have been presented.