Wireless Testbench Applications on NI USRP Radios

R2026b

Wireless Testbench™ provides applications and interfaces for working with supported NI™ USRP™ radios to design, test, and validate wireless systems. Application objects support high-performance baseband transmit, capture, and spectrum monitoring, while System objects and Simulink^® blocks support standalone peripheral data I/O.

Use basebandTransmitter, basebandReceiver, and basebandTransceiver application objects to transmit and capture IQ data over the air.
Use preambleDetector and energyDetector application objects to capture specific signals for spectrum monitoring.
Use SDRu System objects and blocks to transmit and receive data with real-time processing in MATLAB^® or Simulink.

For details about which NI USRP radios you can use with Wireless Testbench features, see Supported Radio Devices.

You can also use Wireless Testbench to design and deploy custom algorithms on NI USRP radios. For more information, see HDL Code Generation for NI USRP Radios.

Baseband Transmit, Capture, and Detector Applications

Wireless Testbench provides prebuilt FPGA images that enable you to explore wireless applications for NI USRP radios by using MATLAB application objects. This diagram is a high-level overview of how Wireless Testbench application objects leverage the capabilities of supported radios.

Using a Wireless Testbench application object, you can configure prebuilt FPGA images to transmit, capture, or detect wireless signals and write your application code for experimenting and testing.

Wireless Testbench Application Object	Description
`basebandReceiver`	Capture raw IQ data from the air. Uses onboard data buffering to ensure contiguous data capture, or captures directly to the host computer.
`basebandTransceiver`	Simultaneously transmit and capture IQ waveforms over the air. Supports continuous or single-shot transmissions with onboard data buffering.
`basebandTransmitter`	Transmit IQ waveforms over the air. Supports continuous or single-shot transmissions with onboard data buffering.
`preambleDetector`	Detect and capture a signal of interest from the air using correlation with a known preamble sequence.
`energyDetector`	Detect and capture a signal of interest from the air using an increase in signal energy as the trigger.

Standalone Peripheral Applications for Live Data I/O

Unlike application objects, which use prebuilt FPGA images, SDRu System objects and Simulink blocks use the default FPGA image provided by the hardware vendor. Use SDRu System objects and blocks to configure a supported NI USRP radio as a standalone peripheral for live data I/O with real-time processing in MATLAB or Simulink. This diagram is a high-level overview of how SDRu System objects and blocks leverage the capabilities of supported radios.

Using a Wireless Testbench System object™ or block, you can configure supported radios as a standalone peripheral to transmit and receive wireless signals and write your application code for experimenting and testing.

System Object	Simulink Block	Description
`comm.SDRuReceiver`	SDRu Receiver	Receive data from a USRP radio for real-time processing in MATLAB or Simulink.
`comm.SDRuTransmitter`	SDRu Transmitter	Send data to a USRP radio for real-time over-the-air transmission from MATLAB or Simulink.

Wireless Testbench Applications on NI USRP Radios

Baseband Transmit, Capture, and Detector Applications

Standalone Peripheral Applications for Live Data I/O

See Also

Objects

Blocks

Topics