Off-the-Shelf Reconfigurable Software Define Radio Approach for Vector Network

The goal of this work is to develop a promising low cost vector network analyzer measurement system based on reconfigurable Software Define Radio (SDR) using minimal components and utilizing open source signal processing framework, GNU Radio. This work was motivated by the possibility to realize a low cost and a fast development cycle time by eliminate the SoC system building. The traditional method utilizing the GNU Radio relies on its GUIs only is not flexible, rigid and unable to acquire the baseband data immediately. A new methodology to perform data acquisition from the GNU Radio software is developed to add more flexibility on signal characteristic from SDRs. The developed methodology comprises of Python scripts that are automatically generated and open source packages from GitHub Linux project. As a conclusion, the RF characterization on the Device under Test (DUT) to determine S-parameter of reflection coefficient can be measure quickly on SDR platform.