Paper Info
Title
RF-SITL: A Software-in-the-loop Channel Emulator for UAV Swarm Networks
Abstract
We introduce RF-SITL, a radio frequency (RF) software-in-the-loop (SITL) channel emulator developed with GNU Radio and the University at Buffalo’s Airborne Networking and Communications (UB-ANC) emulator to enable integrated simulation of systems comprising multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) interacting over a wireless communication channel. RF-SITL could be paired with any multi-robot simulator to enable I/Q sample-level fidelity simulation of communication interactions between the robots by accurately simulating channel effects, including interference, noise, distance-dependent path loss, and packet losses. RF-SITL works as follows: 1) it instantiates a virtual software-defined transceiver in GNU Radio for each UAV simulated in the UB-ANC Emulator; 2) it builds an interference channel model in which each network node receives the superposition of signals transmitted from other nodes; and 3) it synchronizes the location of each simulated UAV in the UB-ANC Emulator with the virtualized RF transceivers in RF-SITL, such that the communication channel between nodes can accurately model distance-dependent channel effects, such as path loss. With these capabilities, we can use both off-the-shelf and custom-built signal processing flowgraphs that simulate Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK), 802.11-like Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), and direct sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) links in GNU Radio to simulate swarm UAV networks prior to their deployment in software-defined radios in a swarm UAV network.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1109/WoWMoM54355.2022.00076
2022 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM)
Keywords
DocType
ISBN
Software defined radios,Channel emulation,Software in the loop,UAV networks
Conference
978-1-6654-0877-6
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
5
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Nicholas Mastronarde124026.93
Daniel Russell200.34
Zhangyu Guan300.68
George Sklivanitis400.34
Dimitris Pados520826.49
Elizabeth Serena Bentley602.03
Michael Medley700.68