WARPLab: Multi-node Prototyping with Real Wireless Data

In this paper we present WARPLab, a framework which allows rapid prototyping of algorithms for wireless communications by combining the ease of MATLAB with the capabilities of the Wireless Open-Acces Research Platform (WARP). The WARPLab framework provides the software necessary for easy interaction with the WARP hardware directly from the MATLAB workspace. WARPLab is unique in its capabilities for being used as both a General Purpose Processor (GPP)-Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform and a hybrid GPP-SDR and Programable Hardware (PH)-SDR platform. With WARPLab the user can choose to implement all of the baseband signal processing in MATLAB, hence, enabling the use of WARP as a GPP-SDR. The user can also choose to implement part of the signal processing in realtime on the WARP hardware’s FPGA, hence, enabling the use of WARP as a hybrid GPP-PH-SDR platform. This paper demonstrates the capabilities of WARPLab by presenting examples of wireless communications algorithms This work was partially supported by NSF grants CNS-0619769, CNS-0551692, and CNS-0923479 M. Duarte, P. Murphy, C. Hunter, S. Gupta, and A. Sabharwal are with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005 USA, e-mail: {mduarte, murphpo, chunter, sgupta, ashu}@rice.edu Preprint submitted to Elsevier October 7, 2011 implemented using WARPLab and a detailed description of the WARPLab architecture.