Adventures in RFNoC: Lessons Learned From Developing a Real-Time Spectrum Sensing Block

Explore the development of real-time spectrum sensing blocks using RF Network-on-Chip (RFNoC) framework in this conference talk from GNU Radio Conference 2021. Dive into the lessons learned from implementing fast spectrum sensing (FSS) algorithms on the Ettus X310 radio's FPGA. Discover how RFNoC lowers the barrier to entry for FPGA-based digital signal processing, enabling increased speed and reduced latency for computationally intensive algorithms. Learn about the AXI-Stream Payload Context interface, block architecture designs for different FSS implementations, and methods for sending block-generated packets. Gain insights into the challenges faced during development, throughput and bandwidth performance, and the potential applications in dynamic spectrum sharing. Understand how this work contributes to minimizing interference in modern communications networks by enabling sub-millisecond spectrum sensing capabilities.