Muhammad Ismail: High-Precision Pulse Characterisation of the USRP B205mini-i Using Ultra-Fast Serial Data Acquisition

This work gives a precise experimental analysis of pulse signal parameters generated by the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) B205mini-i SDR with the high-speed LeCroy Serial Data Analyser (SDA) 18000 as the measuring instrument. The aim was to measure basic waveform parameters i.e. rise time, mean and instantaneous power, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and noise power across varying pulse widths and sampling rate configurations. Pulse trains of 10 microseconds to 25 nanoseconds widths were transmitted at sampling rates of 10 to 50 MSPS, and reception was performed from up to 100 mega samples per second (MSPS) to 10 giga samples per second (GSPS). The recorded waveforms were subsequently post-processed through MATLAB to determine temporal and power measurements. The results indicated that increasing the reception sample rate led to improved temporal resolution and reduced signal jitter, thereby decreasing measured rise times significantly. However, this improvement came at the cost of increased noise, necessitating the application of digital filtering to accurately estimate rise time. It was also observed that the best signal integrity was achieved when the receiver's sample rate was approximately ten times that of the transmitter. Furthermore, comparisons between theoretical and measured signal amplitudes confirmed the USRP's capability to maintain signal fidelity across varying conditions. This research not only demonstrates the USRP B205mini-i performance in generating quality pulse signals but also provides insights for practical applications to optimize SDR configurations for applications such as radar, high-rate communications, and spectrum analysis.

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