Integration of Software Defined Radio and Beamformer

In this paper, a low cost Beamformer is developed and integrated to Software Defined Radio (SDR) for wireless communication. The beamforming module is designed to steer the beam to different angles. The SDR integrated with the beamforming module excites <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$4 \times 4$</tex> array antenna. The necessary phase shifts for the Digital Phase Shifter are computed using Phase Compensation Technique to steer the beam from boresight. The <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$4 \times 4$</tex> array antenna is designed as four <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$1 \times 4$</tex> subarray. The complete transmitter and receiver block to modulate textual information is designed in LabVIEW Software. The transmission of textual information at various beamforming angles is verified by capturing the signal at the receiver and measuring the SNR. The constellation diagram and SNR for various scan angles is presented for the Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) modulation scheme.