Portable wide-band channel sounder based software defined radio for studying the radio propagation in an outdoor environment

Recently, applying the multimedia wireless sensor networks and computer vision techniques in the outdoor agriculture field can be observed. Since the performance of such techniques is limited by the low data rate of the wireless sensor network, the transmission using the wider bandwidth is one of the possible solutions. This paper proposes the technique to develop the wide-band channel sounder for investigating the wideband propagation characteristic in such outdoor environment by utilizing only the low cost and simple narrow-band software defined radio system. It can be realized by synchronizing the timing between the transmitter and the receiver over the air using the power detection approach as well as implementing the multitone-overlapping frequency stepping technique for the wideband coverage. The validation test in the laboratory was performed to verify the proposed channel sounder.