Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS

Authors: Robert Koch, Gerald Ulbricht, Christopher Laske

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS is one of the world’s leading application-oriented research institutions for microelectronic and IT system solutions and services. The institute’s Communication Systems Division develops both civil and military software defined radio (SDR) technologies. The focus is on system design, requirement engineering, software and hardware development as well as contributions to standardization bodies.

At WinnComm-Europe 2019 Fraunhofer IIS showcases an SDR platform for fast prototyping of new waveform applications or new technologies like MIMO in the tactical domain. It features a fully modular design from the antenna connector up to the application’s packet data. The platform is designed for lab use as well as for field trials.

The demo will include several SDRs embedded in a small-scale version of our simulation, test, and reference environment (SumO). The setup is based on a cooperation with the Bundeswehr Technical Center for Information Technology and Electronics (WTD 81).

Software Defined System is the industry's response to the ever increasing complexity and flexibility requirements of today's electronic systems. The Software Communications Architecture (SCA) enables the fulfillment of such requirements for complex heterogeneous embedded distributed systems. In this demonstration, NordiaSoft shows how SCA software can be developed using tools that combine model-driven design (MDD) and rapid application development (RAD). Using Zero Merge code generation technology, the business source code for an SCA component (modulator, encoder, etc.) is kept separate from the infrastructure code that deals with deploying, instantiating, configuring, connecting, inter-process communications, etc. This demonstration will show how the proposed approach provides the greatest potential of reuse for intellectual property

OpenWiFi

This demo will showcase the initial capability of our full stack real-time Wi-Fi design based on Software Defined Radio (SDR), which is related to the presentation "From laboratory to the field: An open source Software Defined Radio project coupled with native Linux driver framework". The demo hardware is composed of Xilinx Zynq 7000 SoC and Analog Devices AD9361 Radio Frequency (RF) front-end. The SoC contains FPGA and ARM cortex A9 processor. 802.11a/g OFDM transceiver, related data/control interface and low level Media Access Control (MAC) are implemented in FPGA. The corresponding driver is implemented under Linux mac80211 framework. The driver, high level MAC/protocol and Linux Operating System (OS) are run on ARM processor. The demo will set up communication with a commercial Wi-Fi device, such as a cell phone or laptop. Traffic, such as ping, video, will run over the Wi-Fi link. On top of this basic standard compliant communication capability,  two time slices will be set up across full stack. Different devices/traffics can be grouped into different time slices according to Quality of Service (QoS) requirements.

VIAVI (NASDAQ: VIAV) is a global provider of network test, monitoring and assurance solutions to communications service providers, enterprises, network equipment manufacturers, civil, government, military and avionics customers, supported by a worldwide channel community including VIAVI Velocity Partners. We deliver end-to-end visibility across physical, virtual and hybrid networks, enabling customers to optimize connectivity, quality of experience and profitability. VIAVI is also a leader in high performance thin film optical coatings, providing light management solutions to anti-counterfeiting, consumer electronics, automotive, defense and instrumentation markets. Learn more about VIAVI at www.viavisolutions.com.

Visit our booth to see the latest updates to our SCA Platform, including demonstrations of SCA AM, FM and DMR waveforms, user FPGAs, and a first-look at our WInnF Transceiver 2.0 interface and our Signal Workshop signal generation and analysis suite running as SCA virtual test probes!