Lecturer: EMILIANO SISINNI
COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AND MULTIMEDIA - TECNOLOGIE DELLE COMUNICAZIONI E MULTIMEDIA

This course takes a Software-Defined Radio (SDR) implementation approach to learn about modern analog and digital communication systems. Indeed, SDR is an inherent part of the modern communication system, where many processes, which used to be implemented in hardware, are defined in the software domain for flexibility and configurability. We will begin by discussing the basic principles of wireless radio frequency transmissions and leverage this knowledge to build analog and digital communication systems. Knowledge of these techniques and systems will provide a platform that can be used in the lab class project for further exploration of wireless networking topics such as cybersecurity, cognitive radio, smart cities, and the Internet of Things.
In particular, the first part of the course will review concepts about Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and communications, followed by a second part on real-world SDR systems implementation, focussing on AdalmPLUTO from ADI, and introduce the use of MATLAB from MathWorks for hardware targeting. Hands-on activity will be carried out in lab sessions, where we will develop real-time ‘desktop’ implementations of SDR transceivers.

Course outline:
- Radio technology evolution
- Transceiver architectures
- Antennas and radio front-end (including the use of programmable logic devices for signal processing)
- Multirate DSP in SDR
- Direct digital synthesis (DDS)
- Analog to digital and digital to analog conversion
- Software methods for implementing analog and digital modulations using SDRs
- Laboratory: hand-on activity on Software Defined Radio AdlamPLUTO using Mathworks Matlab.