GRCon21 - Azure Orbital, RF Simulation, and Spectrum Processing on Azure

Presented by Hrishi Shelar and Craig Pomeroy at GNU Radio Conference 2021 In this presentation we’ll introduce RF|Sim, a software radio automation framework that allows users to simulate their SDR designs in the cloud in a highly scalable, GNU Radio-based, virtual channel emulation environment. RF|Sim allows users to provide containerized SDR designs and instantiate them in a simulated RF environment. RF|Sim can simulate the propagation of RF emissions from each antenna in the simulation to all other antennas according to a set of user-specified, time-varying channel files, including effects such as propagation loss, multipath, time delay, doppler shifts, etc. These simulations are highly scalable and support full mesh connectivity topologies of hundreds of nodes in real time. We’ll also introduce a new OOT module that we’ve developed to leverage Azure services naturally within a flowgraph To showcase a real-world example, we will introduce Microsoft’s Ground Station as a Service offering, Azure Orbital, which uses the flexibility and configurability of cloud-based, software defined ground station modems to interoperate with a wide variety of spacecraft without requiring an extensive collection of custom hardware. We will demonstrate how RF|Sim can be used in conjunction with Azure Orbital to enable end-to-end testing of customer satellite designs against virtual SATCOM ground stations using GNU Radio. https://events.gnuradio.org/event/8/