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

[Martin Braun]

On 10/16/2014 11:50 AM, Vanush Vaswani wrote:
> Is it possible to do 11ac on SDR?

Vanush,

the answer to *any* question of the type "can we do standard X on SDR"
is always 'yes'.

Are you planning to do this yourself, or are you looking for a finished
solution? Also, what's your goals?

M

> 
> 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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