Building radio systems from digital parts: a HF radio transmitter on a FPGA developement board,

BSTRACT The paper describes a sequence of laboratory exercises focused on designing and building a TX-RX radio chain where all the processing uses digital circuits (SDR approach). The students have access to a high-level codesign environment, which allows to design, simulate and synthesize analog/digital systems. They can explore a variety of design solutions, and use tools very close to industrial practices. The transmitter core is a Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS), with AM and FM modulation capability. The transmitter uses on-board ADC and DAC, with direct RF output. TX parameters are selectable from the on-board switches. Tx testing is carried out using commercial radio receivers, but also some units of the receiver chain are designed, built, and tested.