Real-time Wideband Software-defined Radio with Python Programmability based on RFSoC

Next-generation wireless networks necessitate large signal bandwidth to support the growing demands of high data rates, which poses significant challenges in the design of real-time radio platforms. We demonstrate SPEAR, a realtime wideband software-defined radio (SDR) utilizing the Xilinx RFSoC ZCU216 evaluation board. SPEAR leverages a customized "Streaming Direct Memory Access (DMA)" IP to address the latency issues associated with DMA control, thereby enabling high bandwidth data streaming in real-time. It also features a Python-based hardware configuration tool and signal processing framework incorporating an OFDM-based Physical layer. We showcase a real-time data link using the direct RF radio architecture between two RFSoC ZCU216 boards, achieving an error vector magnitude (EVM) of 3.2% for 256QAM across a bandwidth of 1.25 GHz.