SDR control interface: An FPGA based infrastructure for control of VPX Software Defined Radio systems

We present a flexible, scalable, re-usable, open-source based control and Built-In Self-Test (BIST) System-on-Programmable-Chip (SoPC) hardware infrastructure: the Software Defined Radio (SDR) control interface. Our design endows centralized Virtual Path cross-connect (VPX) switch fabric systems with a hardware infrastructure to control and test the RF Transceiver (TRX) Integrated Circuits (ICs) of a SDR platform. We include a detailed description of the design, show results of an FPGA based implementation and finally experimental validation of the system is carried out by successfully configuring and controlling the Texas Instruments (TI) TRX SDR ICs.