Description
USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) is the canonical academic Software-Defined Radio platform. In CSI / wireless-sensing literature it is the lab-grade ground truth: a USRP B210 or X310 paired with GNU Radio can record raw I/Q samples across DC-6 GHz and reconstruct CSI from first principles, validating commodity-NIC measurements and serving as the receiver in passive-wifi-radar setups. USRPs are too expensive ($1.5k-$10k each) to deploy at scale but indispensable for methodology validation.
Specs / capabilities
- B210: DC-6 GHz, 2 Tx + 2 Rx, 56 MHz instantaneous bandwidth, USB 3.0
- X310: DC-6 GHz, 2 Tx + 2 Rx (4 with daughterboards), up to 200 MHz bandwidth, 10 GbE
- 12-16 bit ADC / DAC depending on model
- Compatible with GNU Radio, MATLAB, srsRAN, OpenAirInterface
Tooling
- USRP Hardware Driver (UHD): https://github.com/EttusResearch/uhd
- GNU Radio companion blocks
- gr-ieee-802-11 (Bastian Bloessl) for software 802.11n CSI extraction
Used by (papers)
- Methodology-validation papers cross-checking commodity-NIC CSI against SDR ground truth
- Passive WiFi radar receivers
- Custom waveform research