Microsoft Research Software Radio (Sora) is a novel software radio platform with fully programmability on commodity PC architectures. Sora combines the performance and fidelity of hardware SDR platforms with the programmability and flexibility of general-purpose processor (GPP) SDR platforms. Sora uses both hardware and software techniques to address the challenges of using PC architectures for high-speed SDR.
About Software Radio
In conventional wireless communication ｓｙｓｔｅｍs, the critical lower layer processing, that is, the physical layer (PHY) and medium access control (MAC), is typically implemented in ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) chips, due to the high-computational and real-time ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments. Designing ASIC is costly, both economically and time-wise. It is also fixed, and therefore, once it is delivered, it cannot be changed ｏｒ upgraded. The lack of flexibility and programmability makes experimental research in wireless communication become very difficult, especially for research groups in academics. The wireless and networking research group in Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing is developing a new high-performance wireless platform purely based on software running on a low-cost, commodity PC. The platform, called Sora, provides a convenient way for experimenting with novel wireless technologies.
Platform Dilemma
Software radio (or Software Defined Radio, SDR) holds the promise of fully programmable wireless communication ｓｙｓｔｅｍs, effectively supplanting current technologies that have the lowest communication layers implemented primarily in fixed, custom hardware circuits. Realizing this promise in practice, however, has presented developers with a dilemma. Many current SDR platforms are based on either programmable hardware, such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), ｏｒ embedded digital signal processors (DSPs). Such hardware platforms can meet the processing and timing ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments of modern high-speed wireless protocols, but programming FPGAs and specialized DSPs are difficult tasks. Developers have to learn how to program to each particular embedded architecture, often without the support of a rich development environment of programming and debugging tools. Hardware platforms can also be expensive.
In contrast, SDR platforms based on general-purpose processor (GPP) architectures, such as commodity PCs, have the opposite set of tradeoffs. Developers program to a familiar architecture and environment using sophisticated tools, and radio front-end boards for interfacing with a PC are relatively inexpensive. However, since PC hardware and software have not been designed for wireless signal processing, existing GPP-based SDR platforms can achieve only limited performance. For example, the popular GNU Radio/USRP platform achieves only a few hundred Kbps throughput on an 8MHz channel, ｗｈｅｒｅas modern high-speed wireless protocols ｌｉｋｅ 802.11 support multiple Mbps data rates on a much wider 20MHz channel. These constraints prevent developers from using such platforms to achieve the full fidelity of state-of-the-art wireless protocols while using standard operating ｓｙｓｔｅｍs and applications in a real environment.
Resolving the Dilemma
The Wireless and Networking Group in Microsoft Research Asia, has resolved the SDR platform dilemma by developing Microsoft Research Software Radio (Sora), a fully programmable software radio platform that provides the benefits of both SDR approaches. With Sora, developers can implement and experiment with high-speed wireless protocol stacks (that is, IEEE 802.11a/b/g) by using commodity general-purpose PCs. Developers program in familiar programming environments with powerful tools on standard operating ｓｙｓｔｅｍs. Software radios implemented on Sora appear ｌｉｋｅ any other network device, and users can run unmodified applications on their software radios with the same performance as commodity hardware wireless devices.
To develop such a high-speed wireless platform on general-purpose PC architectures is very challenging:
- Transferring high-fidelity digital waveform samples into PC memory for processing ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅs very high bus throughput. Existing GPP platforms ｌｉｋｅ GNU Radio (USRP) use USB 2.0 ｏｒ Gigabit Ethernet, which cannot satisfy this ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅment for high-speed wireless protocols.
- Physical layer (PHY) signal processing has very high computational ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments for generating information bits from waveforms, and vice versa, particularly at high modulation rates; indeed, back-of-the-envelope calculations for processing ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments on GPPs have instead motivated specialized hardware approaches in the past.
- Wireless PHY and media access control (MAC) protocols have low-latency real-time deadlines that must be met for correct operation. For example, the 802.11 MAC protocol ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅs precise timing control and ACK response latency on the order of tens of microseconds. Existing software architectures in the PC cannot consistently meet this timing ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅment.
Sora uses both hardware and software techniques to address the challenges of using PC architecture for high-speed SDR:
- We have developed a new, inexpensive radio control board (RCB) with a radio frontend for transmission and reception. The RCB bridges an RF front-end with PC memory over the high-speed and low-latency PCIe bus. With this bus standard, the RCB can support 16.7Gbps (x8 mode) throughput with sub-microsecond latency, which together satisfies the throughput and timing ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments of modern wireless protocols while performing all digital signal processing on the host CPU and memory.
Radio control board provides a high-speed PCIe interface to host PC.
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To meet PHY processing ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments, Sora makes full use of various features of widely adopted multi-core architecture in existing GPPs. The Sora software architecture also explicitly supports streamlined processing that enables components of the signal processing pipeline to efficiently span multiple cores.
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We change the conventional implementation of PHY components to extensively take advantage of lookup tables (LUTs), trading off computation for memory. These LUTs substantially reduce the computational ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments of PHY processing, while at the same time taking advantage of the large, low-latency caches on modern GPPs.
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Sora uses the SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) extensions in existing processors to further accelerate PHY processing. With these optimizations, Sora can fully support the complete digital processing of 802.11b modulation rates on just one core, and 802.11a/g on two cores.
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To meet the real-time ｒｅｑｕｉｒｅments of high-speed wireless protocols, Sora provides a new kernel service, core dedication, which allocates processor cores exclusively for real-time SDR tasks. We demonstrate that it is a simple yet crucial abstraction that guarantees the computational resources and precise timing control necessary for SDR on a GPP.
The Microsoft Research Asia team has developed a demonstration radio ｓｙｓｔｅｍ, SoftWiFi, based on the Sora platform. SoftWiFi currently supports the full suite of 802.11a/b/g modulation rates, seamlessly interoperates with commercial 802.11 NICs, and achieves equivalent performance as commercial NICs at each modulation. Sora is the first SDR platform that enables users to develop high-speed wireless implementations, such as the IEEE 802.11a/b/g PHY and MAC, entirely in software on a standard PC architecture.
Publications
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Kun Tan, Jiansong Zhang, Ji Fang, He Liu, Yusheng Ye, Shen Wang, Yongguang Zhang, Haitao Wu, Wei Wang, and Geoffrey Voelker, "Sora: High Performance Software Radio using General Purpose Multi-core Processors," USENIX NSDI 2009, Apr 2009, Boston, MA. (Awarded Best Paper)
Demos
- Sora: High Performance Software Radio Using General Purpose Multi-core Processors. In NSDI 2009, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Apr 2009. (Awarded Best Demo)
- Soft-LTE: A Software Radio Implementation of 3GPP Long Term Evolution Based on Sora Platform. In ACM MobiCom 2009, Beijing, China, Sep 2009. (Honorable Mentioned Demo)
- Experimenting Software Radio with the Sora Platform. In SIGCOMM 2010, New Delhi, India, Sep 2010.
About the Software Radio Academic Kit
A Software Radio ｓｙｓｔｅｍ with RCB and single 2.4GHz Radio. The team has made an academic kit available to academia for research purposes. The initial SDK release contains drivers, sample codes, and various software development tools for baseband processing. The subsequent releases will contain more tools and samples for experimental wireless research. Our hope is that Sora can substantially contribute to the adoption of SDR for wireless networking experimentation and innovation.
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