Spectrum Sensing

Platform: Software Defined Radios USRP B210

Resources needed: User equipment with USRP B210.

Short Description: Collect the IQ samples for analyzing which spectrum bands are occupied in the span of interest.

Detailed Description: The experiment makes use of USRP Hardware Driver (UHD) and a Python script to compute the spectrum occupancy at regular intervals. The script logs the frequency components in a .csv file which can be copied by the users for analysis and visualization.

Follow the steps below to create leases and launch containers for this experiment:

  1. Login to the ARA portal.

  2. Create a reservation using the Project -> Reservations -> Leases tab from the dashboard using the following attributes:

    • Site: CurtissFarm or Ames

    • Resource Type: AraRAN

    • Device Type: User Equipment

  3. Launch a container on the reserved node using the corresponding reservation IDs as described in the Hello World experiment. For the container, use the following Docker image:

    • Container Image: arawirelesshub/ara-sensing:v1

    Note that the container is equipped with UHD and other required dependencies.

  4. [Optional step if the user wants to access the container via SSH] Once the container is launched, take a note on the floating IP from the container information.

  5. The containers can be accessed via the console tab of the respective containers in the Project -> Containers tab from the dashboard or using ssh via the jumpbox server. Visit ARA Jumpbox for more information on accessing containers via jumpbox.

  6. In the container, run the following commands to start the experiment

    # cd /root
# python3 sensing-experiment.py

    The command starts the experiment and logs the spectrum occupancy information in different files in the same folder. The users can copy the files to their computer and plot using a Python script or MATLAB and check the occupied spectrum bands between 3400 and 3600 MHz at that location.

Tip

If you want to perform weather measurements along with the RAN experiments, refer to ARA Weather APIs.