Spectrum monitoring for wireless TV and FM broadcast using software-defined radio

In this paper, the deployment of a radio monitoring system using software-defined radio (SDR) technologies is addressed. The main advantage of using software-defined radio is its reconfigurable ability and flexibility to set the communication parameters when monitoring radio signals. We propose a feasible architecture of spectrum monitoring in which a control center is built using GNU Radio platform; some remote monitoring stations are built with SDR devices. At each remote station, an SDR dongle embedded with Realtek RTL2832U chip and a USRP (universal software radio peripheral) device are used to measure radio signals. Through TCP/IP network, measurement results or complex sampled data from the SDR devices can be sent to the monitoring center. Some key measurement tools for radio monitoring such as spectrum analyzer and audio/video player are also implemented in the proposed system. The major benefit of the proposed architecture is the cost-effective and flexible platform as compared with traditional spectrum monitoring systems. Moreover, both the radio signals and demodulated audio/video content can be remotely monitored at the control center.