Exercise 3: I and Q Signals

Sending and Receiving Pulses

1. Set up the “Simple Transmitter” in exercise 1 on one PC and a receiver on a second PC.
Select a carrier frequency of 432MHz. The receiver should just contain a spectrum scope.
Use this transmitter/receiver pair to determine the frequency discrepancy between the
transmitter and the receiver. Adjust the frequency of either one so that they are aligned.
Increase the frame size of the receiver to increase the resolution of the spectrum scope
display. This will improve your accuracy. You may find that you need to adjust back and
forth several times before you align them successfully.
2. Modify the transmitter to send a 10KHz pulse baseband signal as illustrated in the second
part of exercise 1. Make sure to use the frequency offset determined in step 1 here and in all
future exercises. Confirm that the spectrum received is what you expect to see.
3. Add a vector scope to the output of the rectangular pulse filter in the transmitter. The vector
scope is the scope that you need to use when your data is in frames or vectors. The regular
scope will not work. Run the simulation. Confirm that:
• The period of the pulses corresponds correctly to your generated pulses
• The number of bits displayed on the vector scope corresponds to the number of
bits you expect to see in one frame
4. Add the vector scope to the same point in the receiver as the spectrum scope. When you run
the receiver model you should get a Complex Signal Mismatch error. This indicates that the
vector scope only accepts a real input. Recall that the SDRu receiver block outputs complex
values.
5. Add a Complex to Real-Imag block and connect two vector scopes as shown in the figure
below. Re-run the simulation. What do you observe on each scope? Note you should see
your pulse train with noise on at least one of them. You may also note that the pulses are
modulated by a low frequency sign wave as discussed in the lecture. Try varying the
frequency correction factor and see how this is affected.

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6. Experiment with the physical location of the TX and RX USRPs to determine the
relationship between the relative amount of noise on the pulses in relation to the distance
between the transmitter and receiver antennas.
7. Remove the Random Integer Generator and replace it with the From Workspace block in the
DSP Toolbox, Sources library. Set it with the following parameters:
• Signal: [ 1 0 ]’
• Sample time: 1/10000
• Samples per frame: 1000
• Form output: cyclic repetition

This will generate a repeating bit stream of 1 0 with the same data rate as the previous
random data stream. Using this non-random data stream will allow us to check the accuracy
of our receivers in future exercises.

8. Run the transmitter and receiver. Does the vector scope show the correct data? Is the
spectrum the same as the previous random stream? Why or why not?
9. Change the data pattern in the transmitter source to 1 0 1 1 0 1 and repeat step 8.
10. Repeat step 8 one more time with a data source pattern: 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 .
What can you conclude about the received spectra in each of these cases?

Binary Baseband Modulators

1. Set up a transmitter with the model shown below. Use the following settings:

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 • Random Integer Generator: Set it to generate binary data at 10,000 bits/sec in frames of
size 1000.
• BPSK Modulator: default settings
• Rectangular Pulse Filter: 20 samples per pulse
• SDRu Transmitter Block: Transmit at a carrier frequency of 432MHz.

2. Use vector scopes to observe the output of the random integer generator, BPSK Modulator
Block, and Rectangular Pulse Filter block. Use the Discrete Time Scatter Plot scope to
display the I and Q values of the BPSK modulator block. Make sure that you understand
what you are seeing in each case.
3. Replace the BPSK Modulator with a DBPSK modulator. Repeat steps 2 and 3. Why do we
use DBPSK instead of BPSK? You may need to refer to your communications book.

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