O V E R V I E W
The Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) enables
engineers to rapidly design and implement powerful, fl exible
software radio systems.
The USRP product family consists of the motherboards (the
original USRP and the USRP2), which contain an FPGA for high-
speed signal processing, and interchangeable daughterboards
that cover different frequency ranges. Together, they bridge
between bits in a host computer and one or more antennas.
Among the various daughterboards, the USRP family has an
overall range of DC to 5.9 GHz, which covers everything from AM
radio through Wi-Fi and beyond.
The true value of the USRP family is in what it enables engineers
and designers to create on a low budget and with a minimum
of effort. The powerful combination of fl exible hardware, open-
source software and a community of experienced users makes it
the ideal platform for your software radio development.
H A R D W A R E
The original USRP is a very low cost software radio device.
It connects to a host computer by USB 2.0 (480 Mb/s), and
can send up to 16 MHz of RF bandwidth in either direction. It
contains an FPGA which can be reprogrammed, 4 high-speed
Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs), 4 high-speed Digital to
Analog Converters (DACs), and a lot of auxiliary analog and
digital IO to make integration into a larger system easy. It can
accommodate up to 2 transceiver daughterboards, making it 2x2
MIMO capable out of the box.
The USRP2 builds on the success of the original USRP, offering
higher performance and increased fl exibility. The USRP2
connects to the host computer via Gigabit Ethernet, allowing it to
send up to 50 MHz of RF bandwidth in and out simultaneously. It
contains a much larger FPGA which can even be used to operate
the device in a standalone fashion, without a host computer. It
has higher-speed and higher precision ADCs and DACs. The
USRP2 holds a single transceiver daughterboard, and multiple
USRP2s can be connected together to form very wide MIMO
systems (up t