Software Defined Radio
using the
Linux Industrial IO framework
- A Hardware Abstraction Layer -
Lars-Peter Clausen, Analog Devices
What is IIO?
Industrial Input/Output framework
Not really just for Industrial IO
All non-HID IO
ADC, DAC, light, accelerometer, gyro, magnetometer,
humidity, temperature, rotation, angular momentum, ...
In the upstream Linux kernel since v2.6.32 (2009)
Moved out of staging/ in v3.5 (2012)
~200 IIO device drivers (v3.19)
Many drivers support multiple devices
Why use IIO for SDR?
Provides hardware abstraction layer
Allows sharing of infrastructure
Allows developers to focus on the solution
Allows application re-use
Why use IIO for SDR?
Kernel drivers have low-level access to
hardware
MMIO
Interrupts
IIO provides fast and efficient data transport
From device to application
From application to device
From device to network/storage (soon)
IIO Framework
IIO Devices
IIO Devices
Main structure
Typically corresponds to a physical hardware
unit
Represented as directories in sysfs
IIO Attributes
IIO Attributes
Describe hardware capabilities
Allow to configure hardware configuration
Represented as files in sysfs
IIO Channels
IIO Channels
Representation of a data channel
Has direction, type, index and modifier
Attributes provide additional information
scale, offset
Calibration data
Filters settings, hysteresis
...
IIO Buffers
IIO Buffers
Used for continuous data capture/transmit
Channels can be enabled/disabled
Channels specify their data layout
/dev/iio:deviceX allows read()/write() access
Configuration using sysfs files
Support for different buffer implementations
Software FIFO
DMA Buffer
Device specific buffer
IIO DMA buffer
DMA is used to copy data from device to
memory
mmap() is used to make data available in
application
Allows low overhead high-speed data capture
Data is grouped into chunks (called DMA
blocks) to manage ownership
Either application or driver/hardware owns a block
IIO DMA buffer
Example AD-FMCOMMS2-EBZ
Software Defined Radio platform
AD9361 Agile integrated transceiver
200 kHz - 56 MHz sample rate
Tunable from 70MHz to 6GHz
Full-duplex
MIMO, 2x RX and TX
Each channel a set of 12-bit I and Q
data
Example AD-FMCOMMS2-EBZ
root@analog:/sys/bus/iio/devices# ls
iio:device0 iio:device1 iio:device2
iio:device3 iio:device4
root@analog:/sys/bus/iio/devices# cat */name
ad7291
ad9361-phy
xadc
cf-ad9361-dds-core-lpc
cf-ad9361-lpc
Example AD-FMCOMMS2-EBZ
# ls iio\:device1/
in_voltage_filter_fir_en
in_voltage_gain_control_mode_available
in_voltage_rf_bandwidth
in_voltage_rf_dc_offset_tracking_en
in_voltage0_gain_control_mode
in_voltage0_hardwaregain
in_voltage0_rssi
...
out_voltage_filter_fir_en
out_voltage0_hardwaregain
out_voltage0_rssi
...
filter_fir_config
...
in_temp0_input2
Example AD-FMCOMMS2-EBZ
# ls iio\:device4/
buffer
in_voltage0_calibbias
in_voltage0_calibscale
in_voltage1_calibphase
in_voltage_sampling_frequency
in_voltage0_calibphase
in_voltage1_calibbias
in_voltage1_calibscale
name
scan_elements
Example AD-FMCOMMS2-EBZ
# ls iio\:device4/buffer/
enable
length
# ls iio\:device4/scan_elements/
in_voltage0_en
in_voltage0_index
in_voltage0_type
in_voltage1_en
in_voltage1_index
in_voltage1_type
Plumbing Layer
libiio
High level C interface to IIO
Abstracts away low level details of IIO kernel
ABI
Transparently handles Low-Speed and HighSpeed devices
Uses high speed interface when available
libiio
Multiple backends
Local, directly using the IIO ABI
Network, uses network protocol to talk (remote)
server (iiod)
Debug, fake devices for testing
Bindings for python, C#, (C++)
Cross platform (Linux, Windows)
iiod
Multiplexing between multiple readers/writers
Support for remote clients (via TCP/IP)
Applications do not need system level
privileges
Transparent from the applications point of view
iiod & libiio
IIO Scope
Capture and display data
Time domain, frequency domain, constellation,
cross-correlation
Markers
Plug-in system for easy configuration GUIs
Custom math operations (experimental)
IIO Scope Capture Window
IIO Scope Plugins
GNU Radio Plugin
Two base classes
IIO Sink, Transmit data to a IIO device
IIO Source, Receive data from a IIO device
Can select device and inputs/outputs
Built-in support for Interpolation/Decimation
GNU Radio Plugin
Possible to subclass IIOSink/IIOSource
e.g. to implement device specific specialization
GUI
Setting attributes
Current examples:
FMCOMMS2 Sink
FMCOMMS2 Source
Gnu Radio Plugin
Demo
FM radio receiver
Demo Setup
AD-FMCOMMS3-EBZ (AD9361)
Zed Board (ZYNQ FPGA) running Linux with
AD9361 IIO driver and IIOD
Laptop running GNU Radio with the IIO plugin
Laptop connected to ZED board via Ethernet
Demo Flow
Capture data in the FM radio spectrum
Stream it from the ZED board to the Laptop
Decode the FM radio stream in GNU radio
Playback FM radio on the Laptops speaker
Demo GNU Radio Canvas
Live Demo
Further information
https://github.com/orgs/analogdevicesinc
https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/libiio
https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/iio-oscilloscope
https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/linux
https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/gnuradio
http://wiki.analog.com/resources/tools-software/linux-software/libiio_internals
http://analogdevicesinc.github.io/libiio/
http://wiki.analog.com/resources/tools-software/linux-software/iio_oscilloscope
https://wiki.analog.com/resources/tools-software/linux-software/gnuradio
https://archive.fosdem.org/2012/schedule/event/iio.html
http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/iio_high_speed.pdf
Q/A
IIO Device Graph (Future)
Use media controller framework to expose
device topology
Allows userspace to auto-discover processing
pipeline
Better support for standard components
IIO Zero Copy (Future)
Use vmsplice and friends to provide zero copy
High-speed network streaming without CPU
interaction
High-speed disk writes/reads without CPU
interaction
