ELE Master of Science Thesis Defense by Garret Magalhaes - ECE
Topic: FPGA-Accelerated RF Environment Emulation: Design, Implementation, and Performance Evaluation
Abstract:
With the rise of wireless communication systems comes the demand for testing Radio Frequency (RF) systems in real environments. This research applies Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology to create a high-fidelity, reconfigurable RF environment framework for efficient and accurate wireless system testing. The comprehensive testbed features multiple modulation schemes including Amplitude Modulation (AM), Frequency Modulation (FM), Binary Phase-Shift Keying (BPSK) for Global Positioning Systems (GPS) spoofing, Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing with Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying (OFDM-QPSK), and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) transmission. FPGAs offer ad-vantages over Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) approaches due to deterministic timing, customizable hardware parallelism, and direct digital signal processing without operating system overhead.
The implementation used MATLAB for signal generation, processing algorithm design, and system validation. For each modulation scheme (except ADS-B), dedicated transmitter and receiver configurations were developed on the USRP X300 platform. Performance evaluation through real-time analysis of time and frequency domain plots confirmed that signal processing and transmission occurred with expected characteristics and timing precision. Results demonstrate FPGA acceleration’s effectiveness in handling computational demands of real-time RF environment emulation while maintaining signal fidelity. This work contributes to transferring theoretical RF system design to practical implementation by providing a framework for creating and testing wireless communication systems in realistic scenarios.
Advisor(s):Dr. Ruolin Zhou, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMass Dartmouth
Committee members:
Dr. Dayalan P. Kasilingam, Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, UMass Dartmouth;
Dr. William P. Craig, Technical Project Mgr., Undersea Warfare Electromagnetic Systems Dept., Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC)
NOTE: All ECE Graduate Students are ENCOURAGED to attend. All interested parties are invited to attend. Open to the public.
*For further information, please contact Dr. Ruolin Zhou
Lester W. Cory Conference Room, Science & Engineering Building (SENG), Room 213A / Zoom Link: https://umassd.zoom.us/j/96767453993 Meeting ID: 967 6745 3993 Passcode: 668490
: 285 Old Westport Road, North Dartmouth, MA 02747
Ruolin Zhou
508.910.6922
rzhou1@umassd.edu