A Wireless Channel Sounding System for Rapid Propagation Measurements

Abstract: Wireless systems are getting deployed in many new environments with different antenna heights, frequency bands and multipath conditions. This has led to an increasing demand for more channel measurements to understand wireless propagation in specific environments and assist deployment engineering. We design and implement a rapid wireless channel sounding system, using the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and GNU Radio software, to address these demands. Our design measures channel propagation characteristics simultaneously from multiple transmitter locations. The system consists of multiple battery-powered transmitters and receivers. Therefore, we can set-up the channel sounder rapidly at a field location and measure expeditiously by analyzing different transmitters signals during a single walk or drive through the environment. Our design can be used for both indoor and outdoor channel measurements in the frequency range of 1 MHz to 6 GHz. We expect that the proposed approach, with a few further refinements, can transform the task of propagation measurement as a routine part of day-to-day wireless network engineering.