Using mmWave equipment on COSMOS SandBox1 (In Progress)

Description

A pair of Sivers EVK06002s, evaluation kits for Sivers IMA TRX BF/01, are deployed on COSMOS SandBox1. TRX BF/01 is a 16+16 IEEE802.11ad Beamforming Transceiver with a complete Radio front-end with 57-66 GHz mmWave frequency range.

Current mmWave setup in COSMOS SB1 looks as shown in the figure below.

Image(channel_sounding_display_orange.jpg

Baseband data samples to Sivers front-ends are fed by USRP X310s with BasicTX and BasicRX daughtercards. BasicTX (​https://www.ettus.com/all-products/basictx/) daughtercard is a simple wideband (250MHz) interface to the raw DAC signals from USRP. Similarly BasicRX (​https://www.ettus.com/all-products/basicrx/) provides a simple, wideband interface to USRP ADCs. The raw data can be generated/processed in the FPGA on USRP X310 and can be transferred to the host servers srv1-lg1, srv2-lg1 over 10G Ethernet link for further processing/storage. Control software for Sivers front-ends runs on srv3-lg1 and srv4-lg1. srv3-lg1 is directly connected to Sivers SN0240 and srv4-lg1 is connected to Sivers SN0243. These servers also have a direct USB connection to the X310s, for JTAG programming.

This tutorial demonstrates how to transmit and receive a signal in the 60GHz mmWave spectrum using these Sivers front-ends.

Prerequisites

In order to access the test bed, create a reservation and have it approved by the reservation service. Access to the resources is granted after the reservation is confirmed. Please follow the process shown on the COSMOS work flow page to get started.

Resources required

4 servers srv1-lg1 to srv4-lg1, 2 USRP X310s, sdr2-md2, sdr2-md3 and both the Sivers platforms on COSMOS SB1.

Execution

Prepare the host nodes

As shown in the figure above, Sivers control software runs on srv3,srv4, whereas the UHD/gnuradio application to generate/process data samples runs on srv1,srv2. So, appropriate images have to loaded on these servers. The image sivers_sb1_cosmos.ndz, has UHD and Sivers control software installed.

• Load sivers_sb1_cosmos.ndz on srv3,srv4

  prasanthi@console:~$ omf load -i sivers_sb1_cosmos.ndz -t srv3-lg1,srv4-lg1
  

• If using an example application from UHD, sivers_sb1_cosmos.ndz can be used on srv1 and srv2 as well. If using a custom UHD application or Gnuradio application, please load baseline_sdr_1804.ndz.

  prasanthi@console:~$ omf load -i sivers_sb1_cosmos.ndz -t srv1-lg1,srv2-lg1
  

prasanthi@console:~$ omf load -i baseline_sdr_1804.ndz -t srv3-lg1,srv4-lg1

• Turn the nodes on

  prasanthi@console:~$ omf tell -a on -t rv1-lg1,srv2-lg1,srv3-lg1,srv4-lg1
  

• Check the status

  prasanthi@console:~$ omf stat -t all
  

    -----------------------------------------------
   Node: mob2-1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org         State: POWERON
   Node: mob3-1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org         State: POWERON
   Node: sdr2-lg1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
   Node: sdr2-md1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
   Node: sdr2-md2.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
   Node: sdr2-md3.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
   Node: srv1-lg1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
   Node: srv2-lg1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
   Node: srv3-lg1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
   Node: srv4-lg1.sb1.cosmos-lab.org       State: POWERON
  -----------------------------------------------
    
  

• ssh to the nodes, use option -Y if using GUI.

• Configure 10G data interface

Prepare Sivers front-ends

Run the experiment

• Start transmit application on the TX node.

• Start receive application on the RX node.

Image(channel_sounding_display_orange.jpg