Research And Design Of RF & Communication Teaching Kit

Traditional RF teaching experiment instruments and equipment are usually diversely designed for specific experiment requirements in teaching practice, which are mainly focused on experiments of individual RF component. Inefficiency interconnections between multifarious components and test equipment can hardly satisfy surging demands of modern education with both RF component experiments and system experiments. In this thesis, a complete RF teaching kit with all-in-one RF transceiver architectures design scheme was propose, as well as necessary baseband signal processing implementation for a real turn-key solution as a flexible and multi-purpose RF experimental platform.The overall structure of the proposed RF teaching kit is described in the first part of this thesis. The system is based on module design conception. System backbone is made up of five composing modules:a baseband signal processing module, a RF transmitter module, a RF receiver module, a coherent modulation/demodulation module, a centralized power supply and control module.The baseband signal processing module of teaching kit is supported by a hardware architecture with flexible configuration capability, which is implemented by mainstream microcontroller and FPGA. Microcontroller is designed as the hub of the entire control system, FPGA is configured as baseband codecs and mod/demods for different modulation and coding schemes. With a single USB connection to personal computer, students can conduct RF digital communication experiments under real signal transceiver environments. Students also can explore even more into communication systems with the aid of modern simulation software, such as matlab and simulink, linked to proposed RF teaching kit. RF transmitter and RF receiver module is composed by PLLs, mixers, power amplifiers, LNAs, filters and other facilities in the teaching kit. The down-converting mixer in the receiver module is designed with an image-rejection architecture, simulating a typical wireless receiver design paradigm. Each key component in the system has individual input and output ports, maintaining experimental flexibility. Generally, specifications of each single component in a typical RF communication system can be individually measured, modulation schemes and coding format can also be configured as needed to satisfy demands in diversity experiment setups.Based on the coherent modulation and demodulation module of the RF teaching kit, coherent carrier phase detection experiments could be set up. This special function would be helpful for the students to exploring basic principles of microwave ranging in a typical continuous wave radar system, such as frequency domain reflectometry.In this thesis, details of circuits design, modules development and components debugging of the proposed teaching kit are provided. While specifications of key components are presented, the performance analysis of current design and possible technical improvement suggestions are also discussed.