Performance Enhancement of Software Defined Radio using Filter Bank Multi Carrier Communication and Equalisation Techniques

Abstract

Modern day radio communications are more of software oriented and configurable one. Towards this SDR Forum (now called WInnF-Wireless Innovation Forum) has evolved continuously in setting new standards in Software Communication Architecture (SCA) which are future ready. As the new radio inventions occur, there are few drawbacks such as backward compatibility problem, spectrum leakage through side-lobes, multipath fading, time offset and carrier frequency offset etc., This degrades the SDR performance in many ways. In this study in order to enhance the performance of SDR, we have chosen the inter-operability problem, inefficient spectrum usage in the existing OFDM modulation techniques and interference arising out of multi-path reflections in SDR as the most important challenges. newlineAs of now, there is a void between legacy radio and modern communication devices. This backward compatibility problem exists between SCA version 2.2.2 radios and SCA version 4.X compliant radios. In this research work, enhancement in SCA standards are suggested to mitigate the interoperability problem by modifying the Base Component, Device Component, Application Manager Component, Application Factory Component and Device Manager Component in the Core Framework of SCA. At the interfaces the modifications are suggested to handle with controls and Componetisation. This will enhance the performance of SDR further in the battlefield for efficient communication between two or many radios. newlinePresent 4G communication technology uses OFDM as its modulation standards. As the future trend in communication demand is towards the spectrum efficiency, higher data-rate and flexibility, it is pertinent to make the future communication more spectrum-efficient. On close analysis of OFDM, it is found that there is spectrum leakage through side-lobes. In this study, it is suggested that using Filter Bank Multi Carrier (FBMC) communication technology, side-lobes of spectrum can be made efficient to a considerable level.