Development of low cost spectrum qualifier for new iot technologies

Abstract

With the evolution of radio technologies during the last decades, the companies are replacing equipment with individual components with particular functions by systems where most signals are treated digitally through digital signal processing techniques. With this, engineers can develop many applications at the software level, enabling new analyses to exists. With the growth of the internet of things, companies are deploying new solutions around the world. Most of these solutions are wireless applications that use the unlicensed frequency spectrum band, which increases the density of wireless devices in a location. In environments with numerous wireless equipment transmitting simultaneously, it is essential to detect how busy the frequency spectrum is before deploying a new solution. A spectrum analyzer can analyze this, but the cost of acquiring suitable equipment can be very high. Besides that, these devices only allow users to analyze the frequency spectrum, not the technology itself, packet loss, data rate, and coverage, without purchasing expensive software licenses. This thesis presents the development of a software-defined radio application capable of evaluating the performance of radio technologies, such as Bluetooth or Wi-SUN, and shows their behavior in a noisy environment.