Software Radio Platform for 4Gmobile Systems (PLASOFTRA)

The partners of this project were the University of La Coruña, University of Alcalá, University of Sevilla and the University of Cantabria (GTAS). Its goal was the construction of a software radio platform for the development of radio interfaces for the fourth generation of mobile communication systems (4Gmobile). These systems will demand data rates much higher than those provided by current systems. In order to accomplish these requirements, this project studied new frequency bands around 5 GHz and the development of new signal processing techniques to exploit the radiofrequency spectrum more efficiently. In the project a platform with two RF transmitters and one receiver at 5 GHz employing the MMIC (Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits) technology was built. All the base band operations, both in transmission and reception, were programmable (according to the software radio idea). Towards this aim we used programmable RF signal generators and a high performance A/D converter that will enable us to capture the received signal in order to subsequently implement by software the fundamental base band operations: synchronization, equalization, interference cancellation, etc. Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) and Orthogonal Frequency Multiplexing (OFDM) technologies were considered.