Software Analyzer of Spectral Correlation Functions Using a Low-Cost SDR Receiver

Abstract

This paper is aimed at demonstrating the working prototype of real-time spectral correlation density (SCD) estimator being implemented as an application written in a high-level programming language Python and run on a personal computer equipped with low-cost software-defined radio receiver RTL2832U. The application supports graphical user interface and has module architecture. The outline of the main window designed with Qt framework and screenshots of the running application are shown. The multithreading implemented in the application allows changing the estimation parameters while the main subroutine is conducting an iterative SCD estimation. The test run of the prototype showed that, in case of a priory chosen limited cyclic frequency bandwidth, cyclostationary analysis in bifrequency domain can be carried out on-the-fly for an electric signal at the processing rate of more than three hundred samples per second, which was the actual sampling rate in kilohertz used for acquiring the complex envelopes of the signal.