Low-Latency Analog-to-Analog Signal Processing using PC Hardware and USRPs

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-latency, real-time signal processing platform using SDRs and PC hardware, achieving 31 microseconds latency for rapid prototyping of analog-to-analog systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel PC-based platform utilizing DPDK for low-latency signal processing with USRP hardware, enabling fast prototyping in various signal processing fields.

Findings

Achieved 31 microseconds analog-to-analog latency

Implemented real-time channel emulation

Validated the platform's low-latency performance

Abstract

In this paper, we implement a low-latency rapid-prototyping platform for signal processing based on software-defined radios (SDRs) and off-the-shelf PC hardware. This platform allows to evaluate a wide variety of algorithms in real-time environments, supporting new developments in the fields of classical, AI-based, and hybrid signal processing. To accomplish this, the streaming protocol of the used USRP X310 devices is implemented using the Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), which allows to handle network communication in userspace only. This bypasses the kernel and thus avoids the latencies caused by interrupt handling, scheduling, and context switches. It allows signal processing to be performed on isolated processor cores that are protected from interrupts to a great extent. To validate our approach, linear time-invariant channel emulation has been implemented. For this, an analog-to-analog latency of 31 microseconds was achieved, demonstrating that our PC-based approach enables the implementation of rapid-prototyping systems with low latency.