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Spectrum monitoring for wireless TV and FM broadcast using software-defined radio

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Abstract

In this paper, the deployment of a radio monitoring system using software-defined radio (SDR) technologies is addressed. The main advantage of using software-defined radio is its reconfigurable ability and flexibility to set the communication parameters when monitoring radio signals. We propose a feasible architecture of spectrum monitoring in which a control center is built using GNU Radio platform; some remote monitoring stations are built with SDR devices. At each remote station, an SDR dongle embedded with Realtek RTL2832U chip and a USRP (universal software radio peripheral) device are used to measure radio signals. Through TCP/IP network, measurement results or complex sampled data from the SDR devices can be sent to the monitoring center. Some key measurement tools for radio monitoring such as spectrum analyzer and audio/video player are also implemented in the proposed system. The major benefit of the proposed architecture is the cost-effective and flexible platform as compared with traditional spectrum monitoring systems. Moreover, both the radio signals and demodulated audio/video content can be remotely monitored at the control center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Telecommunications Management, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 70101, Taiwan

    Wen-Tzu Chen, Ku-Tung Chang & Chung-Pao Ko

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  1. Wen-Tzu Chen
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  2. Ku-Tung Chang
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  3. Chung-Pao Ko
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Correspondence to Wen-Tzu Chen.

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Chen, WT., Chang, KT. & Ko, CP. Spectrum monitoring for wireless TV and FM broadcast using software-defined radio. Multimed Tools Appl 75, 9819–9836 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-2764-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-015-2764-5

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