Development of a relay using USRP platform for indoor

Abstract

The increasing customer demand in broadband mobile wireless communication technology leads to the introduction of the relay. Relay is able to increase the capacity and coverage between base station and mobile user. There are a lot of benefits that motivate the usage of relay, including reducing the power used at base station and extending coverage area. Existing literature on relay focuses mainly on simulation, with no measurement validation. This research therefore aims to develop a prototype of Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relay using software defined radio. The proposed relay is developed using LabVIEW software and programmed on NI-USRP 2922 software defined radio platform. Measurement is performed indoor and the signal strength or receive power at the mobile user with and without relay is recorded. The result shows that the receive power performance and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the user improve 23% when the AF relay is deployed, as compared to direct link point to point transmission without relay. As a future work, the proposed relay can be further studied in outdoor environment and MIMO antenna configuration to determine the receive power performance in line-of-sight area.