1
Real Time Video Transceiver using SDR testbed
with Directional Antennas
Apurv Shaha∗ , Duy H. N. Nguyen∗ , Nathaniel Rowe† , and Sunil Kumar∗
∗ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182
† Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, NY
Email: ashaha@sdsu.edu, duy.nguyen@sdsu.edu, nathaniel.rowe.1@us.af.mil, skumar@mail.sdsu.edu
Abstract—In this paper, we propose a real-time transmission
and reception scheme for high-quality video using the directional
antenna with the smart beamforming. We implemented a
Software Defined Radio (SDR) testbed based on Universal
Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and LabVIEW, which
can provide a cost effective solution for prototyping wireless
communication systems. First, the major challenge for the
streaming high quality video is high data rate. In our proposed
system, the high data rate up to 56 Mbps is obtained with
the directional beamforming transmission/reception. Second,
packet efficiency, i.e., successful packet reception of the system
should be high. In our proposed system, the packet efficiency
up to 98.56% is achieved of by our developed algorithm. Third,
the frame rate of the video transmission, which should be
high, is attained at 30 fps in our implementation. The high
power at the receiver is achieved by the use of the directional
antenna. The experimental results show that the Inter Symbol
Interference (ISI) is reduced to the great extent. Furthermore,
the proposed solution is investigated by using high-order
modulation techniques like 64-QAM and 256-QAM.
Index Terms—Beamforming, 256-QAM, Directional Antenna,
USRP, SDR, LabVIEW Real Time Video, 5G.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The video traffic has become one of the main traffic in
the wireless internet networks recently. As we are moving to
the next generation networks there is high demand of video
traffic. Augmented reality, 3D hologram and virtual reality are
giving boost for the video traffic [1]–[3]. There are some of
the prominent features of handling high quality video: high
data rate, successful packet reception and the higher frame
rate of the system. So our implementation have addressed
all the threes issues. Furthermore, we are presenting the new
approach for handling video traffic using software defined
radio technology with USRP and the directional antenna.
The hardware tools used in our implementation are as
follow: USRP, directional antenna, camera, and LabVIEW
which is used as the software tool. The USRP integration
with LabVIEW provides the user editing language graphically,
which replaces text with the graphical programming code.
There are several advantages of using USRP namely high
In-phase/Quadrature(I/Q) rate, high sampling rate, high Radio
Frequency(RF) bandwidth and strong data processing capacity
[4]–[6]. The USRP device performs the signal processing
This work was supported by U.S. Department of Defense under Grant
No. FA8750-17-1-0140. Approved for public release; Distribution Unlimited:
88ABW-2017-4520, 18 Sep 2017.
978-1-5386-1104-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
operation which can use for the development of cross layer
design across physical layer and medium access layer. The
USRP is “Software Defined Radio” re-configurable device and
it can be used for many applications like Massive Multiple
Input Multiple Output (MIMO), spectrum monitoring, beam-
forming, 802.11 and Long Term Evolution (LTE) prototyping,
synchronization of heterogeneous networks, direction finding,
radar, signal intelligence, Cognitive Radio (CR) and military
communications [7].
The Directional communication is part of next generation
wireless networks (5G) [8]–[10]. In our implementation, the
directional antenna is used due to following advantages such
as more energy in the desired direction and less energy in
the undesired direction, better tolerance to jamming by using
nulling, better spatial reuse hence higher aggregated capacity,
better link connectivity, longer transmission range implies
lower latency and fewer hops, less impact of interference [11],
[12].
In this paper, we are interested in obtaining high data rate,
high frame rate and efficiency of the system. Recent work in
[1], [13] have studied transmission of a video under similar
condition but they has not been obtained high packet efficiency
of the system. A more recent papers [14], [15] investigated the
problem of efficiency of the system but has not been addressed
the problem of achieving high data rate and frame rate of
the system. Different to the work in [1], [13]–[15] this paper
address the solutions to the problem like achieving high data
rate, high frame rate and efficiency of the system using USRP
and the directional antenna.
The organization of the paper is as follows. Section II
overviews the system architecture designed in LabVIEW soft-
ware using USRP testbed and directional antenna. Section III
outlines the proposed algorithm for transmitter and receiver
of the high quality video streaming. Section IV focuses on
the experimental results like data rate of the system, power
received, constellation mapping, packet efficiency and frame
rate. Section V is dedicated for a conclusion and future work.
II. S YSTEM A RCHITECTURE
Figure 1 illustrates the beamforming procedure using the
USRP and the directional antenna. The high-quality video is
captured by the camera and transferred to the host computer
connected to USRP 2943R device via an 10Gbps Ethernet
Cable. All the signal processing is done at the USRP device,
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Fig. 1: Beamforming using USRP and Directional Antennas
Fig. 2: Block Diagram QAM Signal Generation
which we will explain in detail later on. The directional
antennas are used having the azimuth and elevation beamwidth
of 11◦ . The receiving directional antennas are placed at the
distance of few meters from the transmitting antenna as
illustrated in the Figure 1. The high-quality signal is received
by the directional antenna having a beamwidth of 11◦ in the
direction of the transmitter. Moreover, the received signal is
sent to the URSP device where signal processing is performed.
The output of the URSP is connected the host computer for
displaying the message.
The operations involved in USRP transmission are as
follows. The computer synthesizes the baseband I/Q (In-
phase/Quadrature) signals and then transmits the signal to a
device via an 10Gbps ethernet connection. The Digital Up
Converter (DUC) consists of mixers, filters which interpolate
a signal to 450 MS/s. The Digital to Analog Converter (DAC)
converts the digital signal to analog signal which is then given
to low pass filter. The Low Pass Filter (LPF) reduces noise
and cuts off all the high-frequency components. The mixer
performs the operation of up conversion as per the user desired
RF frequency. The Phase Lock loop (PLL) controls a Voltage
Control Oscillator (VCO). Here the device is clocked and
a Local Oscillator (LO) is frequency locked to a Reference
Signal (RS). Finally, the amplification procedure takes place
and a signal gets transmitted through the directional antenna.
The operations involved in URSP receiver are as follows.
The drive amplifier and low noise amplifier amplify the
received signal from the directional antenna. The PLL controls
the VCO such that the LO locks its frequency to the frequency
of the RS. Then the mixer performs the down conversion of
the received signal to the I/Q components which we will see
the constellation diagram on the host computer. Furthermore,
the signal is sent to the LPF which reduces the noise and all
the high-frequency component as mentioned earlier. Again, the
2
Fig. 3: Block Diagram of Generation of Frame Rate
Fig. 4: Block Diagram of Input Parameters
analog to digital converter is used to digitize the in phase and
quadrature components. The DUC consists of filters, mixers
which decimate the processed signal to the user desired rate.
Finally, the down converted signal is sent to the PC over the
10Gbps ethernet connection.
Figure 2 illustrates the QAM signal generation block dia-
gram which is designed in LabVIEW interface with USRP.
First, we dequeue all the elements from the received signal
and send the signal to subblock namely QAM.vi. The pulse
shaping parameters such as alpha (roll off factor), filter length,
and type of filter are sent to the QAM.vi. The QAM system
parameters such as samples per symbol and M-QAM are
passed to the subblock Calculate SymbolRateQAM.vi and
QAM.vi. In Calculate SymbolRateQAM.vi we use simple ‘for’
loop to calculate the symbol rate of QAM. The symbol rate
of QAM is given by
DR
SR = (1)
m × F EC
where SR stands for symbol rate, DR stands for data rate,
m stands for modulation index and F EC stands for forward
error correction code rate. Now our implementation is using
256-QAM so we will be using m = 8. Moreover, F EC values
can be assigned such as 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 5/6 and 7/8 depending
on an application.
The high-quality video obtained from the camera is pro-
cessed as illustrated in Figure 3. First we initialize the video,
second, we send it and lastly that part of the video is removed
to save the bandwidth. Then all the elements are enqueued
and are sent for the transmission of video. A small part of the
receiver is illustrated in the Figure 4. The packet parameters
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Fig. 5: Transmitter Block Diagram
Fig. 6: Receiver Block Diagram
of a receiver such as guard bits, sync bits, and message bits
are same as that of transmission. The loop runs for n times.
The frame rate and filter parameters are also inserted here. The
flow of transmission and reception of the signal is explained in
algorithm section. The complete block diagram of transmitter
and receiver is illustrated in Figure 5 and 6.
III. A LGORITHMS
In this section describes our proposed algorithm for the
transmission and reception of video signal using USRP and
directional antennas.
The explanation of transmitter algorithm is as follows. The
first loop on the left side of a block diagram is the input
parameter loop which is explained earlier. The top most loop
on the right side is the data generation loop. The user defines
the data type and what has to be sent. Then it is converted into
binary data which is ready to build the packet. The second loop
3
is the packet creation loop. Packets are created based on the
user defined packet parameters. Each packet has a guard, sync,
message and pad component. The third loop is the modulation
loop. The created packets are sent through the modulation
toolkit where they are translated into I and Q signals ready for
USRP transmission. The fourth loop is the transmission loop.
The modulated IQ signals are sent to the USRP and mixed
with a carrier frequency on board. Here there is a possibility
of sending signal multiple times to guarantee transmission.
Hence, the signal is sent over the air.
The explanation of receiver algorithm is as follows. The left
loop in the block diagram is for the initialization of setup of the
application. The explanation of the first loop is as follows. If
frames of video are being lost, delay the acquisition by a small
amount to sync up the acquisition frame with the video frame.
The second loop is for splitting the incoming data into packets.
The third loop is for the modulation of the data. Parameters are
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Algorithm 1 Transmission of High Quality Video Signal

Initialize the frame rate, packet parameters, IQ sampling rate(S/sec),
frequency(Hz), gain(dB) and antenna port
Packet Transmission:
repeat Bundle the packet Q and bit stream Q, Dequeue the element
from the bit stream Q and packet Q, Build the packet
until all the packet are transmitted
Video Transmission:
while all the parameters are obtained do Enqueue all the parameters
of the video
end while
Modulation:
for i = 1, . . . , N do Set the modulation type, Set the pulse shaping
filter parameter, Generate the QAM signal, Enqueue all the elements
end for

Algorithm 2 Reception of High Quality Video Signal

Initialize the frame rate, packet parameters, IQ sampling rate(S/sec),
frequency(Hz), gain(dB) and antenna port
Packet Receiver:
for i = 1, . . . , N do Dequeue all the received elements, Chop the Fig. 7: A Snapshot of Video Transmission
packet, Separate the imaginary and real part of the signal. Obtain the
power of received signal(Prec), Enqueue all the elements
end for
Modulation:
for j = 1, . . . , M do Choose the modulation and dequeue all the
elements, Set the QAM system parameters, Obtain the constellation
graph and eye diagram of the system
end for
Reconstruction of Data:
for q = 1, . . . , Q do Initialize message array and packet number,
Remove packet numbers and duplicate packets, Decode the video,
Check if the frame is bad?, Get the bit rate of the System
end for

initialized then the signal is re-sampled and demodulated. The

output is raw bit stream from IQ input waveform. The fourth
loop is for the looking at the incoming packets and checking if
sync sequence is correct or not? If so then go ahead and use
the packet. Here, the error checking mechanism like Cyclic
Redundancy Check (CRC) can be added. At the fifth loop,
we append all the packets together and decode back into our
desired data type. So in the last loop, initialization of the large
array occurs so to avoid memory allocation in the loop.
Fig. 8: A Snapshot of Video Reception
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
Figure 7 and Figure 8 illustrates snapshot of video trans-
mission and video reception from which we analyze that
we obtain the same part of a video transmitted. The video
transmission and reception consist of packets. The packet
consists of message bits, guard bits, sync bits and padding
bits. Hence, the packet efficiency ηp is calculated by
MB
ηp = (2)
GB + SB + M B + P B
where M B is the message bit, GB is the guard bit, SB is
the sync bit and P B is the padding bit. We have obtained the
efficiency of the system as 98.56% as illustrated in the Figure
9.
From the Table I and Table II, gives us information about Fig. 9: Packet Efficiency of the System
parameters for transmission and reception of a high qual-
ity video signal. Figure 10 illustrates the panorama of the
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implementation. One screen displays the implementation of

video transmission and another screen displays video receiver
implementation. The procedure is carried by our proposed
algorithm and values displayed in Table I and Table II. Our
implementation uses NI USRP 2943R device and it has 4 ports.
Two ports are the receiver and other two act as a both trans-
mitter and receiver. Our implementation uses one directional
antenna as the transmitter and other 3 directional antennas as
the receiver. All 4 directional antennas are connected to the
USRP device. The directional antennas which is in the range Fig. 10: A Panoramic View of Experimental Testbed
of the transmitter can receive the signal.

Parameters Value
RF Frequency 5.8 GHz
Sampling Frequency 2 MS/sec
Gain 23 dB
Horizontal Beamwidth 11◦
Vertical Beamwidth 11◦
Antenna Port TX1
Modulation 256-QAM or 64-QAM
Alpha 0.5
Filter Length 6
Filter Type Root Raised Cosine
Frame Rate 30 fps
TABLE I: Transmission Parameters of System

Parameters Value
RF Frequency 5.8 GHz
Sampling Frequency 2 MS/sec
Gain 23 dB
Horizontal Beamwidth 11◦ Fig. 11: Receiver Diagram with 64 QAM Modulation Scheme
Vertical Beamwidth 11◦
Antenna Port RX1, RX2
Modulation 256-QAM or 64-QAM
Alpha 0.5
Filter Length 6
Filter Type Root Raised Cosine
Frame Rate 30 fps
TABLE II: Receiver Parameters of System

The transmitting directional antenna 1 is labeled as DA1,

receiving directional antennas are labeled as DA2, DA3, and
DA4 respectively in the anticlockwise direction as seen from
the Figure 10. The DA1 transmits the video having the
beamwidth of 11 degrees (as mentioned in Table I). The DA3
receives the signal because it has the beamwidth of 11 degrees
(as mentioned in Table II) in the same direction as the DA1.
The DA2 and DA4 are not in the beam coverage of DA 1,
hence the video signal is not received by these antennas.
First, streaming of high quality video is investigated using
64-QAM and by 256-QAM modulation scheme. From the
experimental results, 256-QAM is used over 64-QAM because
of its higher spectral efficiency. Figure 11 and 12 illustrates Fig. 12: Receiver Diagram with 256-QAM Modulation
the mapping of constellation diagram using 64-QAM and 256- Scheme
QAM. The white dot in the diagram represents the constella-
tion and the red line represents the transition of the symbols.
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Fig. 13: Bit Rate of the Proposed System
Fig. 14: Received Signal Waveform
Figure 14 illustrates power received by the system using
USRP and the directional antennas. Moreover, Figure 13
illustrates the received data rate up to 56 Mbps which is
excellent for transmission of real time video. The red line
represents the theoretical bit rate and the blue line represents
the practical bit rate. The bit rate is given by formula
F S × 8 × 1000
Rb = (3)
N OM × 60
where Rb is the bit rate of the system, F S is the frame size,
N OM is the number of minutes. The factor 8 indicates the
conversion from bytes to bits. The factor 1000 implies the data
in Mbps and the factor 60 implies the conversion of minutes
to second.
V. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
In this paper, a transmission and reception of real time
video using the directional antenna have been proposed using
USRP and LabVIEW. Here, we have addressed the issues for
streaming high quality video by improving data rate of the
system, obtaining high packet efficiency and higher frame of
the system. The proposed framework utilizes USRP 2943R
connected to 4 directional antennas. The experimental setup
using the USRP was validated by comparing with 64-QAM
and 256-QAM mapping of the signal. In the first scenario,
the 64 QAM mapping is used validate the reception of video
which gives low ISI. In the second scenario, the 256-QAM
mapping is used to validate the reception of video and is
compared to 64-QAM. But we obtain high data rate and high
power when we used 256-QAM along with the directional
antennas. The result shows that we have obtained high packet
efficiency of almost 98.56% with 256-QAM. A higher data rate
of 56 Mbps is obtained by purpose algorithm. Moreover, we
have transmitted higher quality video using frame rate of 30
fps. In future work, we will be implementing multihop routing
using USRP and directional antennas using higher modulation
schemes.
6
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SUPPORT AND
DISCLAIMER
The authors acknowledge the U.S. Government’s support in
the publication of this paper. This material is based upon work
funded by AFRL, under AFRL Grant No. FA8750-17-1-0140.
Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations
expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do
not necessarily reflect the views of AFRL.
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