For some very high-level opinions...<br><br><div><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">1) "The price for the HW is still very high nowadays - 2000 USD per node"</div><div>-> Moore's Law would suggest $2k could go down to $250 in 4.5years, making this a possible timeframe for software defined radio (which could remain relevant to current standards by virtue of abstracting the radio layer) to complete effectively with commercial, silicon-based radio chipsets, which quickly go obsolete. So, if you could future proof GNU radio, to the best extent possible, to support whatever 802.11 is expected to look like in 5 years, you'd be doing very well.</div>
<div><br></div><div>2) Presentations and listerv responses from Brough Turner suggest that fixed broadband wireless is trending heavily toward MIMO in one flavor or another, possibly up to dozens of channels to achieve required throughput goals. Commercial chipsets can support this readily, since the cost of a single channel is negligible compared to packaging and whatever supporting logic boards. Thus, GNU radio would do well to also prioritize generic support for MIMO, since the same Moore's Law would suggest that the 5Mbit link you provide today would need to be a 40Mbit link in 4.5years.</div>
<div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
Anyway, I'd like to use this opportunity to say a few words on what has been<br>
done in the last months in this context:<br>
<br>
802.11a/g RX in GNURadio is 99% done, Giammarco Zacheo (colleague of mine<br>
here at FTW) did a really amazing job and implemented very efficient<br>
receiver code. He will hopefully be able to publicly release it in a few<br>
weeks.<br>
<br>
So now we basically have both TX and RX PHYs.<br>
In combination with a HW-platform that is supported by GNURadio and is able<br>
to sustain 20MS/s IQ-baseband data-rate (e.g. USRP2) this enables to build a<br>
wireless transceiver that:<br>
<br>
1) can talk/listen to all other legacy non-SDR Wi-Fi 11a/g radios<br>
2) is completely open in terms of experimentation/modifications/improvements<br>
on layer 1+2 (community driven innovation!)<br>
3) is not bound to specific parts of wireless spectrum (can be used with all<br>
kinds of up/downconverter daughterboards)<br>
<br>
There are a couple of BUTS involved:<br>
1) The price for the HW is still very high nowadays - 2000 USD per node<br>
2) no 802.11b (we prioritized OFDM for the time being)<br>
3) does not yet meet turnaround latency constraints to be FULLY compatible<br>
to IEEE standards (the old problem with SDR - but there are workarounds for<br>
this)<br>
<br>
And finally:<br>
Before we can really use this for arbitrary IP communication we need to glue<br>
these PHYs to a basic MAC state machine and make the whole stack work. This<br>
will take some time still... if you already have done something like this or<br>
know someone who has:<br>
<br>
Please get in touch with us and share your ideas. Main goal would be come up<br>
with a way that reuses as much as possible from the FOSS world, is easy to<br>
use and modular. We think of stuff like: click modular router, TUN/TAP<br>
methods etc.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
paul<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Ben West<br><a href="mailto:westbywest@gmail.com">westbywest@gmail.com</a><br>
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