gr-radiationpattern

This GNUradio module provides a block to measure and display antenna radiation pattern diagrams.

Neccessary hardware

• measurement transmitter
  • HackRF (or any other radio transmitter)
  • antenna
• receiver
  • HackRF or RTL-SDR
  • stepper motor
  • mounting bracket to mount antenna on stepper motor
  • motor controller:
    • developer board NUCLEO-F103R with BX_NUCLEO_IHM01A1 shield
    • https://developer.mbed.org/users/luelista/code/motorControlShell/

License

This software was developed at SEEMOO Secure Mobile Networking Lab, TU Darmstadt https://www.seemoo.tu-darmstadt.de/

Copyright (c) 2017 Mira Weller

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Instructions

1. Install dependencies:

   On Ubuntu:

    sudo apt-get install cmake build-essential \
                   gnuradio gr-osmosdr python python-serial \
                   python-matplotlib python-numpy python-pexpect
   

   On Arch:

    sudo pacman -S cmake build-essential \
                   gnuradio gr-osmosdr python2 python2-serial \
                   python2-matplotlib python2-numpy python2-pexpect
   

2. Compile and install the module gr-radiationpattern:

    mkdir build
    cd build
    cmake .. && make && sudo make install && sudo ldconfig
   

3. Run:

   • connect the motor control board and the hackrf to the USB
   • make sure your user account has permission on the USB serial port, e.g. sudo chmod 0666 /dev/ttyACM0
   • open examples/receive.grc with gnuradio companion, run it
   • on an other computer, run examples/transmit.grc
   • click on Start measurement
   • ???
   • PROFIT

The interesting python code for the radiation pattern is python/antenna_diagram.py and python/antdiag_window.py. These files are modified versions of wxgui/numbersink2.py and wxgui/number_window.py from the GNUradio distribution.

There is a slightly different version of the antenna_diagram block called wx_radar_py_f which displays an endless updated radar-screen-like polar plot.