Software radio is the technique of getting code as close to the antenna as possible. It turns radio hardware problems into software problems. GNU Radio is a collection of software that when combined with minimal hardware, allows the construction of radios where the actual waveforms transmitted and received are defined by software. The signal processing blocks are implemented in C++. Conceptually, blocks process infinite streams of data flowing from their input ports to their output ports.
To aid beginners, Josh Blum of Johns Hopkins University, has developed a graphical interface for GNU Radio. This GUI termed GNU Radio Companion (GRC) allows users to interact with GNU Radio signal blocks in a manner similar to Labview or Simulink. The entire interface encompasses over 150 blocks from the GNU Radio Project. Blocks are manually integrated into GRC via descriptive python definitions. The definitions are very flexible, and allow multiple GNU Radio blocks to be grouped into a single GRC super-block. A simple AM transmitter and receiver designed in GRC is presented below. The input sound can be given through a mic via sound card of your PC and heard on the receiver PC. Thus a complete and simple communication system can be realized in few minutes with no extra hardware at all.
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