The AEMB has been selected as the central control processor for the next-generation GNU Radio project. GNU Radio is a collection of software that when combined with minimal hardware, allows the construction of radios where the actual waveforms transmitted and received are defined by software. What this means is that it turns the digital modulation schemes used in today’s high performance wireless devices into software problems.

GNU Radio is a collection of software that when combined with minimal hardware, allows the construction of radios where the actual waveforms transmitted and received are defined by software. What this means is that it turns the digital modulation schemes used in today’s high performance wireless devices into software problems.

The AEMB has been selected for use as the central control processor in the next-generation hardware (USRP2) for the GNU Radio project. As a GNU project, the hardware platform naturally pursues an open source approach. Specialised hardware computation units are used to offload the complex calculations used in radio processing while a gigabit network interface ensures an uninterrupted flow of data between the hardware platform and host computer.

With the high bandwidth and computational demands for such an application, many considerations factor into the final design. A fast processor is needed to keep up with the performance demands of the project and a mature C/C++ software toolchain allows embedded software to be written from the start. The AEMB was selected due to it’s superior performance for control operations while consuming only a small fraction of resources.

The GNU Radio project serves as a demonstrator for the AEMB as it shows how the AEMB can be tightly integrated into a highly complex project. Browse the source repository directly to see how it is integrated.

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