Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Looking for 802.11 MAC & PHY Package

[Vanush Vaswani]

Is it possible to do 11ac on SDR?

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 10:07 PM, Bastian Bloessl <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 10/10/2014 06:20 PM, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
>>
>> Dear Marcus and Bloessl,
>>
>> Thanks for the reply. I also notice the fully functional gr-ieee802-11
>> package provide by Bloessl. Previously I thought it's only PHY, but as
>> Marcus mentioned it also include MAC. It seems to me in the
>> gr-ieee802-11-master package, the MAC does not run csma. I also find the
>> gr-ieee802-11-csma package, which is smaller than the master package but
>> indicate "csma" in name and one of examples.
>
>
> Sorry, I don't get what you mean with smaller. Are you talking about the
> file size of the sources?
> All branches add / parse the MAC header as defined in the standard. So the
> frame format is OK on all branches. The 'csma' branch implements channel
> access for broadcast frames.
>
>> After checking the Readme
>> and other pulications from WIME project, I cannot find detail
>> description regarding the MAC and CSMA function for the package.
>
>
> It's the one at the top
> http://www.ccs-labs.org/bib/bloessl2014timings/
>
>>
>> 1. Does the csma package should be used with the master package?
>
>
> No. 'csma' is the name of a branch. You would checkout and use that branch.
>
>> 2. Does the csma package support multiple nodes in an ad-hoc network?
>
>
> The CSMA implementation is for broadcast frames only. So depends on what you
> want to do.
>
>>
>> Return to Marcus's advice, do you mean that to realize the MAC (CSMA),
>> we still need implement FPGA (not the one in USRP?) to handle it in
>> hardware, no matter we use the software lib, e.g. GRU Radio or Click
>> Module Router?
>
>
> To support CSMA functionality you will have to change the FPGA otherwise you
> will not be able to meet the timing constraints of 802.11. For the broadcast
> case you only need some small changes.
> If you want to support ACKS and RTS/CTS you need a lot of functionality on
> the FPGA. In my opinion this will not happen on a N210, but AFAIK Ettus has
> a 802.11 implementation for RFNoC (i.e. for the FPGA) which most likely
> meets all timing constraints.
>
> Best,
> Bastian
>
>>
>> Many thanks for your help again!
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Jiayi
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Marcus Müller <address@hidden
>> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi Jiayi,
>>
>>     :) gr-ieee802-11 is, as far as I know, the most comprehensive,
>>     functional implementation so far. It *can* talk to consumer cards --
>> but
>>     of course, that's not because it has a complete MAC implementation.
>>     Actually, doing a really standards-compliant IEEE802.11agp MAC can't
>>     really be done in host software alone -- the gigabit ethernet
>> interface
>>     alone just has too much latency, and you'll have to be really fast
>> when
>>     detecting ACK's, calculating checksums and sending out the reply. I
>>     doubt you can implement a fully working IEEE802.11 MAC in software
>> alone
>>     without touching the FPGA.
>>
>>     Here's the official source code:
>>     https://github.com/bastibl/gr-ieee802-11 has the source code, btw.
>>
>>
>>     Greetings,
>>     Marcus
>>     On 09.10.2014 21:47, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
>>      > Dear Marcus and all,
>>      >
>>      > Many thanks for the advice regarding the Hydra and ORBIT project.
>>      >
>>      > Actually I'm looking for the open-source 802.11 PHY&MAC packages
>>     which are
>>      > compatible with Recent GNU Radio and USRP N210/X310.
>>      >
>>      > I've searched from internet and got some findings listed below:
>>      > 1) Hydra PHY & MAC from University of Texas at Austin [1]
>>      > 2) FTW IEEE802.11a/g/p OFDM Frame Encoder [2]
>>      > 3) UWICORE m-HOP 802.11 MAC for USRP based on the FTW PHY [3]
>>      > http://www.uwicore.umh.es/mhop-software.html
>>      > *** All (1-3) only compatible with gnuradio-3.2.2 which was too
>>     many years
>>      > ago.
>>      >
>>      > 4) WIME IEEE 802.11a/g/p Transceiver for GNU Radio v3.7 [3]
>>      > http://www.ccs-labs.org/software/gr-ieee802-11/
>>      > *** This is a most recent package for gnuradio 3.7, but is PHY
>>     only. Are
>>      > there any MAC package which compatible with this WIME PHY?
>>      >
>>      > 5) ORBIT Project [5]
>>      > *** This is a huge project which can be studied. Are there any
>>     project
>>      > provide both 802.11 MAC & PHY like Hydrd did before?
>>      >
>>      > Best regards,
>>      > Jiayi
>>      >
>>      > [1] K. Mandke, Soon-Hyeok Choi, Gibeom Kim, R. Grant, R. Daniels,
>>     Wonsoo
>>      > Kim, R. W. Heath, Jr., and S. Nettles, “Early Results on Hydra: A
>>     Flexible
>>      > MAC/PHY Multihop Testbed,” Proc. of IEEE Vehicular Tech. Conf. ,
>> pp.
>>      > 1896-1900, Dublin, Ireland, April 23 – 25, 2007.
>>      > [2] http://www.cgran.org/wiki/ftw80211ofdmtx
>>      > [3] J.R. Gutierrez-Agullo, B. Coll-Perales and J. Gozalvez, "An
>>     IEEE 802.11
>>      > MAC Software Defined Radio Implementation for Experimental Wireless
>>      > Communications and Networking Research", Proceedings of the 2010
>>     IFIP/IEEE
>>      > Wireless Days (WD'10), 20-22 October 2010, Venice (Italy).
>>      > [4] Bastian Bloessl, Michele Segata, Christoph Sommer and Falko
>>     Dressler,
>>      > "An IEEE 802.11a/g/p OFDM Receiver for GNU Radio," Proceedings of
>> ACM
>>      > SIGCOMM 2013, 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop of Software Radio
>>     Implementation
>>      > Forum (SRIF 2013), Hong Kong, China, August 2013, pp. 9-16.
>>      > [5] http://www.orbit-lab.org/
>>      >
>>      >
>>      > On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Marcus Müller
>>     <address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>>
>>
>>      > wrote:
>>      >
>>      >> Yes. Nothing in GNU Radio or UHD (the USRP driver framework) is
>>      >> distribution-specific, so transition from Ubuntu to Fedora
>>     should not be
>>      >> a problem
>>      >>
>>      >> Good luck with finding a "new version" of Hydra; I didn't find any
>>      >> publication after 2009 on a quick first glance on google
>>     scholar[1]. And
>>      >> I couldn't find the source code anywhere. Honestly: If you don't
>>     find
>>      >> anything that proves otherwise, I'd presume that Hydra is kind
>>     of dead
>>      >> [2]. Please prove me wrong on this!
>>      >>
>>      >> There is the ORBIT lab that has come up with a rather
>> comprehensive
>>      >> infrastructure for wireless testbeds, so you might want to look
>>     at that[3].
>>      >>
>>      >> Greetings,
>>      >> Marcus
>>      >>
>>      >> [1]
>>      >>
>>      >>
>>
>> http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22Robert+W.+Heath%22+hydra&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2010&as_yhi=
>>      >> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0
>>      >> [3] http://www.orbit-lab.org/
>>      >> On 09.10.2014 16:41, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
>>      >>> Hi Marcus,
>>      >>>
>>      >>> Another question is that, if we development the software with
>>     GNU Radio
>>      >> and
>>      >>> USRP in Ubuntu, is it easy to transfer to Fedora?
>>      >> Thanks for your reply. I think the best way to us is to find the
>> new
>>      >> version of Hydra package which is based on the recent GNU Radio
>>     version
>>      >> working with current USRP produces.
>>      >>
>>      >>> Many thanks!
>>      >>>
>>      >>> Regards,
>>      >>> Jiayi
>>      >>>
>>      >>> On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Marcus Müller
>>     <address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>
>>
>>      >>>
>>      >>> wrote:
>>      >>>
>>      >>>>  Hello Jiayi,
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> 3.2.2 is *very* ancient. In fact, it's older than my
>>     involvement with
>>      >> GNU
>>      >>>> Radio, and I think it will be very hard to find someone how's
>>     still
>>      >> using
>>      >>>> it, so asking for experience, I'm afraid, is not going to
>>     yield a lot of
>>      >>>> responses in 2014.
>>      >>>> Therefore, it will be nearly impossible to recreate an
>>     environment with
>>      >>>> all the GNU Radio dependencies that match the needs of GNU
>>     Radio 3.2.2.
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> I'm not familiar with Hydra itself; but if it uses GR 3.2.2
>>     you won't be
>>      >>>> able to use it with modern USRPs, you won't have much fun
>>     developing new
>>      >>>> applications for it, and in total it might be wise to look if
>>     you can
>>      >>>> either find a suitable substitute or port it to a modern GNU
>>     Radio.
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> However, I'm optimistic that someone else here has used Hydra,
>>     and maybe
>>      >>>> he has some more specific hints than I do.
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> Greetings,
>>      >>>> Marcus
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> On 08.10.2014 16:50, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> Dear all,
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> I'm a beginner of GNURadio but I'm familiar with some basis of
>>     Linux
>>      >> when I
>>      >>>> use C++ & IT++. Currently I'm trying to test the Hydra-0.4
>>     package for
>>      >>>> evaluation under the last ubuntu ver 14.04.1 32bit. During the
>>      >> installation
>>      >>>> of gnuradio-3.2.2, there is an error which I cannot find the
>>     solution on
>>      >>>> internet.
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> gnuradio-3.2.2$ ./bootstrap && ./configure --prefix=$GR
>>      >>>> …
>>      >>>> checking for boost >= 1.35... yes
>>      >>>> checking whether the boost::thread includes are available... yes
>>      >>>> configure: error: Could not link against libboost_thread!
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> ‘libboost-all-dev’ has already installed, including
>>      >> ‘libboost-thread-dev’,
>>      >>>> I tried both version 1.54 and 1.55 of libboost. I've also
>>     searched the
>>      >>>> error message in Google, even after I installed the
>>     'build-essential'
>>      >>>> package, the error remains the same.
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> I will be much appreciated if any of you have such an
>>     experience and
>>      >> would
>>      >>>> feedback some solutions.
>>      >>>>
>>      >>>> Regards,
>>      >>>> Jiayi (Vincent)
>
>
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